It's that time, folks. Pick up your Skull Mentor and ask for some good freakin' advice, because it's post-release Dominions 6 Grogspocalypse time! :valkyrie:
Era: Early Age
Game name: Groggies
Password: Ask me for PM!
Deadline: Whenever we feel like it
Drop a line in this thread and claim a nation if you wanna drop in the deep end. Lobby is already created, all you have to do is go to Network > Enter Game Lobby and find Groggies.
This won't be a serious competitive game, so feel free to screw around and do a fun build.
Player - Nation:
1. al_infierno - Xibalba
2. Cpt_Howdy - Lanka
3. Tanaka - Ubar
4. Yskonyn - Ulm
5. TheMeInTeam - Mekone
6. Solops - Agartha
jumping into deep end and i have no life preserver! im choosing Lanka, Land of Demons
I am interested, always love Agartha, but right now I am not much more than chum. I need to play solo for at least a few days just to figure out the game again. You guys have left me behind in the experience category. So, maybe?
Nice I'm definitely down to join again!
Cap and Tanaka are penciled in with a "maybe" for Solops.
Still haven't decided who I want to play. Probably gonna go for something silly like Xibalba instead of a nation I'm actually good with.
Tentatively claiming Rus, but I may change my mind before we start.
I PMed some of the old crew and asked if they want to join.
Anyone have thoughts on game settings and features? Right now I have all the default settings on with renaming enabled. Will decide on thrones once we finalize player list.
Still a little shaky on Dom 6 expansion and learning the new mechanics, spells, and tech break points, but count me in!
I'm indeed interested, but might be a little soon. Might be next time. (I'm juggling several multiplayer games already, including two new ones starting up soon.)
Yes I want in! Time to relive good times!
Ulm if available, otherwise Caelum please.
Quote from: Yskonyn on January 19, 2024, 07:11:38 AMYes I want in! Time to relive good times!
Ulm if available, otherwise Caelum please.
Good to see you bro. Hope all is well.
I cannot stand not being in, so I'm in! That being said, we need an underworld, as its bonuses help balance some of Agartha's shortcomings. So far, I am not doing well. After mini-maxing the scales, I find that I still need 800+ points for my pretender :azn: So, I am in no great hurry to start.
My strategy will be heavily dependent on "This won't be a serious competitive game" :grin:
Quote from: Jarhead0331 on January 19, 2024, 07:49:22 AMQuote from: Yskonyn on January 19, 2024, 07:11:38 AMYes I want in! Time to relive good times!
Ulm if available, otherwise Caelum please.
Good to see you bro. Hope all is well.
Thanks Jar! All is well here. How about you?
Quote from: Yskonyn on January 19, 2024, 10:40:14 AMQuote from: Jarhead0331 on January 19, 2024, 07:49:22 AMQuote from: Yskonyn on January 19, 2024, 07:11:38 AMYes I want in! Time to relive good times!
Ulm if available, otherwise Caelum please.
Good to see you bro. Hope all is well.
Thanks Jar! All is well here. How about you?
I'm ok, Ysk. Been a tough couple of months. Lost my brother in June, but family and friends have been great support. Thanks for asking. Hope to see you around here more often.
Ouch. I am sorry for your loss, man.
Yeah its been lurker mode for me. I got promoted to Captain and since it happened it was like fate pulled a prank on me; the first six months were pretty weird with all kinds of shit happening. From passengers pissing against the wall and over the seat inside the aircraft, to my first ever engine failure after a birdstrike to a major security incicent.
Things have settled down now and its back to just having relaxing no fuss shifts. Lol!
For some reason it happens to a lot of newly promoted captains. Fate pulls some weird shit at times.
Its pretty good for confidence building, though. I'll give you that!
Welcome back Yassy.
Muspelheim for me please
Quote from: solops on January 19, 2024, 10:36:34 AMI cannot stand not being in, so I'm in! That being said, we need an underworld, as its bonuses help balance some of Agartha's shortcomings. So far, I am not doing well. After mini-maxing the scales, I find that I still need 800+ points for my pretender :azn: So, I am in no great hurry to start.
My strategy will be heavily dependent on "This won't be a serious competitive game" :grin:
Fortunately for us, buffs now allow troops to see in the dark better!
Will be interesting to see what you build. Test casing EA Agartha more in Dom 5, I found that stacking attack buffs onto the sacreds using bless was the best bet for me; it not only let ancient ones actually hit things, but because they were large enough they would also have good odds to repel most things that could be repelled. Now stat blesses are significantly weaker, so I'm not sure what I'd use. Maybe still attack, lol. Indy counts are higher and blesses more expensive though, so many bless based builds will have a harder time generally.
There's a few nations/tactics I want to try which might go down in flames quickly but would be fun. I tested Mekone too and that's okay, but probably not what I want to go with for first Dom 6 MP.
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup tournament starts today, and in a couple weeks I will be on vacation, so if we start in the next few weeks I will probably be a bit slow on turns (though before vacation, I could still do a turn/day on average). During vacation I will have laptop, but might need an extension here or there for that week.
Quote from: solops on January 19, 2024, 10:36:34 AMI cannot stand not being in, so I'm in! That being said, we need an underworld, as its bonuses help balance some of Agartha's shortcomings. So far, I am not doing well. After mini-maxing the scales, I find that I still need 800+ points for my pretender :azn: So, I am in no great hurry to start.
My strategy will be heavily dependent on "This won't be a serious competitive game" :grin:
We'll have caves. Maybe I'll switch to Xibalba and keep you company in the lonely darkness. ;)
Quote from: TheMeInTeam on January 19, 2024, 02:07:16 PMFortunately for us, buffs now allow troops to see in the dark better!
Will be interesting to see what you build. Test casing EA Agartha more in Dom 5, I found that stacking attack buffs onto the sacreds using bless was the best bet for me; it not only let ancient ones actually hit things, but because they were large enough they would also have good odds to repel most things that could be repelled. Now stat blesses are significantly weaker, so I'm not sure what I'd use. Maybe still attack, lol. Indy counts are higher and blesses more expensive though, so many bless based builds will have a harder time generally.
There's a few nations/tactics I want to try which might go down in flames quickly but would be fun. I tested Mekone too and that's okay, but probably not what I want to go with for first Dom 6 MP.
"many bless based builds will have a harder time generally".....Yeah. None of my builds are doing well. Agartha will never out-build anyone, so scales seems a poor option, the SC route does not seem promising and Rainbow does not leave much for bless-buffing troops at all. I have not come up with a good idea yet, but there is one thing I have not tried....maybe if I <redacted>. Hmmmm.
Alternative is to hide in a dark cave and hope no one notices :ThumbsUp:
I have not figured out how the cave generation works, re how much cave space is generated vs surface space.. Last test on a med map yielded one cave of nine areas. I think I used the "Random" choice for caves.
I know how much you like olms, and I'm sure you noticed the change from ammo to fatigue for natural attacks like that ;).
Quote from: TheMeInTeam on January 19, 2024, 09:42:50 PMI know how much you like olms, and I'm sure you noticed the change from ammo to fatigue for natural attacks like that ;).
Why do they, after a while of "shooting", charge to the front if they are tired? They got fatigued so they run up to engage in melee?
I have not figured this out.
I changed my mind. Gonna play Xibalba. Rus is now available to whomever.
We're gonna be cave buddies, Solops! :Party:
Quote from: al_infierno on January 20, 2024, 03:11:19 AMI changed my mind. Gonna play Xibalba. Rus is now available to whomever.
We're gonna be cave buddies, Solops! :Party:
Are you sure you're not just looking for an easy victim?
MOM!! Xibalba's waving his wings in my eye! I want my own room, errr, cave!
Quote from: solops on January 20, 2024, 12:58:55 AMQuote from: TheMeInTeam on January 19, 2024, 09:42:50 PMI know how much you like olms, and I'm sure you noticed the change from ammo to fatigue for natural attacks like that ;).
Why do they, after a while of "shooting", charge to the front if they are tired? They got fatigued so they run up to engage in melee?
I have not figured this out.
Is that "Ulm"? When I was playing them, I seem to recall they were big on javelins (similar to Roman armament and tactics) so on missile orders they'd hurl a few once in range and then when out of ammo close for melee.
No, I was speaking of the olms of Agartha.
How about no water nations this time haha...
Having water nations allowed vs not would inform my nation choice somewhat. I don't want to pick one, but if there are going to be water nations I'd be more inclined towards nations that have UW capabilities (like solops' Agartha, Ur, or at least nations that can come up with UW capability more easily through items and summons). Even w/o water nations, the presence of significant water can skew the game because some nations can get UW more easily than others (and build forts there w/o using late game magic).
Quote from: TheMeInTeam on January 20, 2024, 08:53:46 PMHaving water nations allowed vs not would inform my nation choice somewhat. I don't want to pick one, but if there are going to be water nations I'd be more inclined towards nations that have UW capabilities (like solops' Agartha, Ur, or at least nations that can come up with UW capability more easily through items and summons). Even w/o water nations, the presence of significant water can skew the game because some nations can get UW more easily than others (and build forts there w/o using late game magic).
Well you are the last player to pick and no one else has picked underwater so if you don't pick one there will be no underwater nations :grin:
I don't have anything good, so I will just roll with Mekone and be useless in late game lol.
Wow...just ran into Muspelheim in a test. What a powerhouse. I may have to play around with them in the future. Well, the more I test, the worse things get. I guess I'd better make up my mind on a build and send it in before my guys start stabbing themselves. Is everyone waiting on me?
Quote from: solops on January 21, 2024, 02:19:04 PMWow...just ran into Muspelheim in a test. What a powerhouse. I may have to play around with them in the future. Well, the more I test, the worse things get. I guess I'd better make up my mind on a build and send it in before my guys start stabbing themselves. Is everyone waiting on me?
Sounds like we are all set to send in Pretenders yes!
Looks like we are waiting on Agartha and Ulm and we can start!
:coffee: :hearts:
Gonna live vicariously through you guys!
Also looks like there is an extra player slot? We have six players but seven slots?
Quote from: Tanaka on January 21, 2024, 07:09:59 PMAlso looks like there is an extra player slot? We have six players but seven slots?
That was just the default number of slots. I can add or remove any as needed before we start.
I hope we can get another player!
What size map are we looking at? i,e, how many provinces/player?
Quote from: solops on January 21, 2024, 08:20:45 PMI hope we can get another player!
What size map are we looking at? i,e, how many provinces/player?
I messaged a few others from the previous games like Ajidica and Boggit, but didn't hear back from them. I'm not in any rush to start the game, but I'm gonna assume this is the full player list unless anyone else speaks up.
Province count hasn't been officially discussed, but right now all the settings are on default except renaming and special event rarity. The default is 15 provinces per player.
Quote from: al_infierno on January 21, 2024, 10:03:12 PMQuote from: solops on January 21, 2024, 08:20:45 PMI hope we can get another player!
What size map are we looking at? i,e, how many provinces/player?
I messaged a few others from the previous games like Ajidica and Boggit, but didn't hear back from them. I'm not in any rush to start the game, but I'm gonna assume this is the full player list unless anyone else speaks up.
Province count hasn't been officially discussed, but right now all the settings are on default except renaming and special event rarity. The default is 15 provinces per player.
Sounds good to me. Why change the events default though?
Quote from: Tanaka on January 22, 2024, 12:17:02 AMQuote from: al_infierno on January 21, 2024, 10:03:12 PMQuote from: solops on January 21, 2024, 08:20:45 PMI hope we can get another player!
What size map are we looking at? i,e, how many provinces/player?
I messaged a few others from the previous games like Ajidica and Boggit, but didn't hear back from them. I'm not in any rush to start the game, but I'm gonna assume this is the full player list unless anyone else speaks up.
Province count hasn't been officially discussed, but right now all the settings are on default except renaming and special event rarity. The default is 15 provinces per player.
Sounds good to me. Why change the events default though?
I changed the default setting from common to rare, but thinking on it now it might nerf the usefulness of Luck. I'll probably just change that back and roll with all default settings except renaming enabled.
Maybe the next patch Illwinter promised soon will come before we start!
Ulm is ready. I had been thinking about a pretender build long and hard, but it turns out MA and EA have enough nuance for the nation to make my plans void, hence the delay in uploading my design. :)
I've got a new plan, which will probably not survive first combat with any of you guys anyway, but that'll be no different from my plan A.
Looking forward to this!
A small disclaimer from my side; due to my irregular work schedules I might have to ask for an turn time extension here and there, but I'll try my best to keep things rolling.
Quote from: Yskonyn on January 22, 2024, 03:53:13 AMI've got a new plan, which will probably not survive first combat with any of you guys anyway, but that'll be no different from my plan A.
I have decided to go with Plan C.
No worries from me on potential delays.
Quote from: Yskonyn on January 22, 2024, 03:53:13 AMUlm is ready. I had been thinking about a pretender build long and hard, but it turns out MA and EA have enough nuance for the nation to make my plans void, hence the delay in uploading my design. :)
I've got a new plan, which will probably not survive first combat with any of you guys anyway, but that'll be no different from my plan A.
Looking forward to this!
A small disclaimer from my side; due to my irregular work schedules I might have to ask for an turn time extension here and there, but I'll try my best to keep things rolling.
Some nations (like Pangaea) have differences between eras but are overall pretty similar. Arguably the jump to LA for Pan is more significant though. The troops don't look too different, but losing easy blood access and gaining one of the better astral mages you can get changes how they actually fight.
In Ulm's case, it's *vastly* different between eras. Keeps forge bonus boost, but it goes from "hard hitting lightly armored stuff" in EA to "full plate troops with even worse magic path access" in MA to "astral + blood nation that has run-away potential with solid troops" in LA.
Agartha changes a bunch in practice between eras too.
MA Ulm is commonly recommended for beginners, but I'm not sure I agree with that because their troops are really slow. I guess the usual routine of "buff good troops with mages" works pretty well, but using their mages WELL is harder than a lot of other nations.
Quote from: al_infierno on January 22, 2024, 02:20:24 AMQuote from: Tanaka on January 22, 2024, 12:17:02 AMQuote from: al_infierno on January 21, 2024, 10:03:12 PMQuote from: solops on January 21, 2024, 08:20:45 PMI hope we can get another player!
What size map are we looking at? i,e, how many provinces/player?
I messaged a few others from the previous games like Ajidica and Boggit, but didn't hear back from them. I'm not in any rush to start the game, but I'm gonna assume this is the full player list unless anyone else speaks up.
Province count hasn't been officially discussed, but right now all the settings are on default except renaming and special event rarity. The default is 15 provinces per player.
Sounds good to me. Why change the events default though?
I changed the default setting from common to rare, but thinking on it now it might nerf the usefulness of Luck. I'll probably just change that back and roll with all default settings except renaming enabled.
Oh I thought the default was rare?
Default is rare in singleplayer, common in multiplayer.
Quote from: al_infierno on January 22, 2024, 08:59:36 PMDefault is rare in singleplayer, common in multiplayer.
Ahhh gotcha!
Looks like all of the pretenders are in then shall we start?
Do we get some kind of notification (in Steam?) when your turn is up?
If not then I think I prefer the old Llama way of getting mails.
It's annoying to check for turns all the time when they're not done yeah. Best by far was the discord bots...way better than using email because it gives a notification you can see more easily.
I am not in yet! Working on getting it in now...
OK, I'm in...I think.
I am willing to give the game's built in lobby a try. They need feedback
I did like the Llamaserver.
Never used Discord. Don't have an account or really know what it is.
I tried the discord bot, but I mostly have discord notifications off because of the spam the app gives when you're a member of several servers.
I do think Clockwork (which pretty much replaced Llama) does also send out emails regardless of using the bot functionality on discord, but I might be wrong.
I sure hope the lobby system thats in Dom 6 gives us some sort of notification.
Before we start, we should agree on throne placement and map setup.
For thrones, I often default to 3 level ones, 2 level twos, and 1 level three with 6 points needed to win. That might be a bit much for only 6 people, maybe we could cut it down to 2-2-1 or something similar?
As for map formation, do we want to use defaults or switch it up?
Thrones are fun! I guess it depends how late players want the game to go wrt points to win. Good expansion + winning 1 player vs player war makes it possible to be in striking range to win outright before turn 30, if the person doing it gets the tier 3 throne nearby.
If you move points to win ~75%, the game is significantly more likely to go late. Anything below 50% risks someone winning PvE in a MP game.
This is completely independent of the number of thrones. I'm good whether we want a bunch or just a few...just want to make sure someone can't just yeet a 3rd throne using a titan and win before we get to test our builds against each other!
I am good with whatever. I just want to play a while and have fun.
Started! Good luck everyone.
Quote from: al_infierno on January 23, 2024, 07:13:29 PMBefore we start, we should agree on throne placement and map setup.
For thrones, I often default to 3 level ones, 2 level twos, and 1 level three with 6 points needed to win. That might be a bit much for only 6 people, maybe we could cut it down to 2-2-1 or something similar?
As for map formation, do we want to use defaults or switch it up?
Default map and 3-2-1 works for me.
Quote from: al_infierno on January 23, 2024, 10:45:09 PMStarted! Good luck everyone.
Excellent! Good luck everyone!
good luck!
Just waiting on Ulm and Mekone...
Good luck! Well that went quickly from 'not in a hurry to start' to 'hurry up you slacker!' !
:D
EDIT: New patch out! 6.03
Re last patch 6.03 "Default Magic site freq could be wrong in lobby games". Could this affect us? If so, now is the time to re-start.
Quote from: solops on January 25, 2024, 01:34:34 PMRe last patch 6.03 "Default Magic site freq could be wrong in lobby games". Could this affect us? If so, now is the time to re-start.
What say all y'all?
Quote from: al_infierno on January 25, 2024, 02:41:04 PMQuote from: solops on January 25, 2024, 01:34:34 PMRe last patch 6.03 "Default Magic site freq could be wrong in lobby games". Could this affect us? If so, now is the time to re-start.
What say all y'all?
I'm fine with a restart
My start position is *really* bad; I am situated on a headland (?) with strong indies on the land provinces towards the continental area and weaker ones on the ocean provinces which I cannot enter.
So it would be a turtle game for me for quite a while. Don't mind a restart at all. :)
So what have we decided? Just Agartha left...
Ideally I'd like to get an OK from everyone before we restart. So far:
Tanaka - yes
Ysk - yes
Solops - Yes? (sounded like a yes)
MeInTeam - no opinion
Cpt_Howdy - ?
Quote from: CptHowdy on January 18, 2024, 06:39:13 AMjumping into deep end and i have no life preserver! im choosing Lanka, Land of Demons
Any preference, Cap?
Yes
doesnt matter to me. i will vote yes since it seems the consensus
OK -- Remade the server. It's called Groggies the return with the same password and settings as before.
It warms the cold ash that remains of my heart to see a vibrant, lively mp thread on these boards again 🥹
I am on the road today. I am really sorry, but i will not be able to do my turn until this evening (Saturday) when i can get my laptop set up.
Quote from: solops on January 27, 2024, 12:33:36 PMI am on the road today. I am really sorry, but i will not be able to do my turn until this evening (Saturday) when i can get my laptop set up.
No problem!
Since we had the extra time and I started playing another game with Muspelheim I decided to try a different nation as Ubar. Hope that is ok!
Quote from: Tanaka on January 27, 2024, 07:25:40 PMSince we had the extra time and I started playing another game with Muspelheim I decided to try a different nation as Ubar. Hope that is ok!
Fine. All you two-eyes look the same.
Let's hope this time Ulm is not surrounded by slippery sea folk.
I think it's hard for nations like Ulm or really most nations w/o amphibious nationals to reliably get underwater in 1st year. It starts being possible for a lot of nations with construction 3 + couple other techs, otherwise you have to hope for ichtyids, merfolk, or atlantians/shambler provinces. I think these are more common in Dom 6 based on testing? Still no guarantee though.
Other issue is that even if you can get UW, most nations can't build forts the normal way there and can't draw resources. Sailing nations probably want a coastal province but most don't, even fully amphibious nations.
What are these "seas" you speak of? Are they akin to the vast mushroom forests of the Great Cave?
OK, I am all loaded into the new game.
Looks like everyone has submitted and the game needs to be started?
Done.
Good luck (again) everybody!
I am unable to get the game to load.
When I select Groggies the return from the Network menu I get a box with "Exit" in it and cannot enter a password or progress from there.
NEVER MIND! Problem solved! It was not a user error. Nope. Definitely not a user error.
Probably.
Well, MAYBE......OK it WAS a user error. Waaah! I confess. I made a booboo.
Good luck everyone again! Hopefully we can get this one moving now! :Party:
Quote from: Gusington on January 27, 2024, 10:15:21 AMIt warms the cold ash that remains of my heart to see a vibrant, lively mp thread on these boards again 🥹
...staggering toward gamestart on a Dominions game, heh!
Good luck everyone!
Will push my turn once I am back from work later today.
I heard back from Ajidica, sadly he didn't get my message in time. He said he's interested in joining the next game! Which I assume will be Middle Age, since this one is Early Age.
Quote from: al_infierno on January 29, 2024, 11:41:02 PMI heard back from Ajidica, sadly he didn't get my message in time. He said he's interested in joining the next game! Which I assume will be Middle Age, since this one is Early Age.
We could make it a series from early to middle to late haha...
Guys, I'll be abroad from tomorrow until monday morning, so I'll play the next cycle in an hour or so, but won't be able to to do a turn until monday.
Quote from: Yskonyn on February 02, 2024, 12:41:41 PMGuys, I'll be abroad from tomorrow until monday morning, so I'll play the next cycle in an hour or so, but won't be able to to do a turn until monday.
Aha! That will give me more time to plot!
And plan! Yeah, i should plan, too. Planning is good.
But, I really like the plotting part.
Looks like we're going to be a bit slow for a while then. I will play turn later today and double up if I'm last to finish it, but on Monday I'm flying for a ski trip. I will have a laptop and should be able to do turns in evenings there, but not sure about Monday itself. Possibly.
Also, I know some of you from previous games and thus can contact on Steam or Discord, but we should probably figure out how we're doing diplo generally.
Quote from: Yskonyn on February 02, 2024, 12:41:41 PMGuys, I'll be abroad from tomorrow until monday morning, so I'll play the next cycle in an hour or so, but won't be able to to do a turn until monday.
Thanks for the heads up! Go ahead and play double turns if you are the last to submit! Thanks!
Quote from: TheMeInTeam on February 02, 2024, 05:44:14 PMLooks like we're going to be a bit slow for a while then. I will play turn later today and double up if I'm last to finish it, but on Monday I'm flying for a ski trip. I will have a laptop and should be able to do turns in evenings there, but not sure about Monday itself. Possibly.
Also, I know some of you from previous games and thus can contact on Steam or Discord, but we should probably figure out how we're doing diplo generally.
Sounds good! I am also Tanaka on Steam and Discord if anyone wants to add me.
Likewise, I'm TheMeInTeam on both Discord and Steam.
Edit: TheMeInTeam is correct on Discord, but apparently on Steam it's TheMeLnTeam.
Back! And double turns played.
Me and Mekone need to have a chat. I've already tried the in game system, but got no reply.
Quote from: Yskonyn on February 05, 2024, 06:50:02 PMBack! And double turns played.
Me and Mekone need to have a chat. I've already tried the in game system, but got no reply.
I don't see anything in the in-game messages. Did you send on double-roll?
I agree though, I get the warm climate in Mekone is attractive this time of year but might want to figure out who's going where!
Quote from: Yskonyn on February 05, 2024, 06:50:02 PMBack! And double turns played.
Me and Mekone need to have a chat. I've already tried the in game system, but got no reply.
Just Ulm left
Just the bats left.
Sounds like we are all starting to meet each other now? Except maybe in the caves?
Quote from: Tanaka on February 08, 2024, 09:35:15 PMJust the bats left.
Sounds like we are all starting to meet each other now? Except maybe in the caves?
Bats are done! I've popped out of the caves, anyone who goes snooping in my territory will see I don't have a lot of real estate beneath the dirt. :embarrassed:
Quote from: al_infierno on February 08, 2024, 09:52:09 PMQuote from: Tanaka on February 08, 2024, 09:35:15 PMJust the bats left.
Sounds like we are all starting to meet each other now? Except maybe in the caves?
Bats are done! I've popped out of the caves, anyone who goes snooping in my territory will see I don't have a lot of real estate beneath the dirt. :embarrassed:
Interesting. As you had caves set to random you must have gotten put in a smaller cave. That probably means Agartha is ruling a large cave somewhere and neither of you have cave competition. Nuts!
Quote from: Tanaka on February 08, 2024, 10:57:41 PMQuote from: al_infierno on February 08, 2024, 09:52:09 PMQuote from: Tanaka on February 08, 2024, 09:35:15 PMJust the bats left.
Sounds like we are all starting to meet each other now? Except maybe in the caves?
Bats are done! I've popped out of the caves, anyone who goes snooping in my territory will see I don't have a lot of real estate beneath the dirt. :embarrassed:
Interesting. As you had caves set to random you must have gotten put in a smaller cave. That probably means Agartha is ruling a large cave somewhere and neither of you have cave competition. Nuts!
Matter of fact, our boys with the pale potbellies have a throne in their underground chamber! :tongue:
...and in a very tiny cave, too.
Apparently we got numerous tiny caves.
Quote from: solops on February 08, 2024, 11:15:37 PM...and in a very tiny cave, too.
Trust me, when you get scouts in my cave, you'll feel like yours is a mansion where they hold magical sex parties! :tophat: :twirl:
Quote from: al_infierno on February 08, 2024, 09:52:09 PMQuote from: Tanaka on February 08, 2024, 09:35:15 PMJust the bats left.
Sounds like we are all starting to meet each other now? Except maybe in the caves?
Bats are done! I've popped out of the caves, anyone who goes snooping in my territory will see I don't have a lot of real estate beneath the dirt. :embarrassed:
Interesting. As you had caves set to random you must have gotten put in a smaller cave. That probably means Agartha is ruling a large cave somewhere and neither of you have cave competition. Nuts!
Quote from: solops on February 08, 2024, 11:17:02 PMApparently we got numerous tiny caves.
Ah interesting! War of the tiny caves! With thrones to boot!
I'm sure the cave wars will come.... sooner or later.... :HideEyes:
There are reports of coastal recruitment having issues after 6.06.
Do we want to wait for a hotfix?
Quote from: Yskonyn on February 10, 2024, 03:33:49 AMThere are reports of coastal recruitment having issues after 6.06.
Do we want to wait for a hotfix?
You mean 6.05? My vote is nah we've all played our turns. Should be fixed before our next turn is finished.
I don't think any of us have specific coastal rec stuff? It could matter a lot for someone like Phaecia but for our nations it probably does nothing? Unless I'm forgetting something on one of them.
Ambivalent
I think we should just advance, unless anybody is noticing being unable to recruit things they should be able to recruit. "Coastal recruitment" is a specific meaning in dominions, basically national stuff that's only available on the coast. I can recruit indies on coastal provinces like usual this turn. None of us is Therados/Berytos/etc, so I don't think this bug influences our particular game whatsoever, but feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken. If not, we might as well continue.
Quote from: TheMeInTeam on February 10, 2024, 06:56:34 PMI think we should just advance, unless anybody is noticing being unable to recruit things they should be able to recruit. "Coastal recruitment" is a specific meaning in dominions, basically national stuff that's only available on the coast. I can recruit indies on coastal provinces like usual this turn. None of us is Therados/Berytos/etc, so I don't think this bug influences our particular game whatsoever, but feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken. If not, we might as well continue.
Agreed I don't think this affects any of us...
Yeah let's go ahead and push on. Ysk, you're the last one left. :knuppel2:
Quote from: Yskonyn on February 10, 2024, 03:33:49 AMThere are reports of coastal recruitment having issues after 6.06.
Do we want to wait for a hotfix?
6.06
This is mostly a quick fix for the coastal fort recruitment that didn't work. Local network should also work with mods now as long as they are installed locally (not workshop).
General
Coastal fort recruitment didn't work
Local network is now fully working for non-workshop mods
Fix for indepenedents using path specific banishement spells
Huli Jing also got her glamour magic
Typo and stat fixes
So the tiny cave wars will be started by invaders from other caves. Thus harmonizing both of Al's posts:
Quote from: al_infierno on February 09, 2024, 02:21:06 AMI'm sure the magical sex parties will come.... sooner or later.... :HideEyes:
Although now that I think of it after the joke -- I don't recall any faction up through Dom 5 featuring a culture like that, although several would have seemed ripe for it. Anything along this line for Dom 6?
Quote from: JasonPratt on February 11, 2024, 03:48:57 PMSo the tiny cave wars will be started by invaders from other caves.
Nooooo! Xibalba and Agartha are CAVE BUDDIES! Trouble will come from those odd, two-eyed, bat-hating surfacers.
Quote from: solops on February 11, 2024, 10:54:07 PMQuote from: JasonPratt on February 11, 2024, 03:48:57 PMSo the tiny cave wars will be started by invaders from other caves.
Nooooo! Xibalba and Agartha are CAVE BUDDIES! Trouble will come from those odd, two-eyed, bat-hating surfacers.
I agree. Those surface dwellers are strange. Their affinity for the sun disgusts me. :nono2:
Ok, turns sent.
Very rough start for me. Don't think I'll last much longer with Mekone coming down on me like a warhammer. ☺️
Quote from: JasonPratt on February 11, 2024, 03:48:57 PMSo the tiny cave wars will be started by invaders from other caves. Thus harmonizing both of Al's posts:
Quote from: al_infierno on February 09, 2024, 02:21:06 AMI'm sure the magical sex parties will come.... sooner or later.... :HideEyes:
Although now that I think of it after the joke -- I don't recall any faction up through Dom 5 featuring a culture like that, although several would have seemed ripe for it. Anything along this line for Dom 6?
Quote from: Yskonyn on February 12, 2024, 02:43:37 AMOk, turns sent.
Very rough start for me. Don't think I'll last much longer with Mekone coming down on me like a warhammer. ☺️
Ah our first war! And so it begins!
Yeah, border dispute after expansion phase flared up into war. Our geographic position made other solutions impractical since we both really wanted particular provinces for good reason. Classic scenario where the most practical solution is for both sides to use weapons to settle it.
I've played enough Dominions to know to not take an outcome for granted until it's realized though. I might be marching to victory, or into some nasty dormant pretender that's now up lol.
New turn's in. I'm marked as unfinished since I have a diplo message out there.
Quote from: al_infierno on February 12, 2024, 06:31:10 PMNew turn's in. I'm marked as unfinished since I have a diplo message out there.
Ditto
It might be a good idea for players to post their Steam or Discord contact info in the thread. I've sent a Grogheads message to one of our players, but I'm not sure they've gotten it.
Mine is:
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/fishyman2k5/
Discord: 408lurker
Quote from: al_infierno on February 14, 2024, 12:06:37 AMIt might be a good idea for players to post their Steam or Discord contact info in the thread. I've sent a Grogheads message to one of our players, but I'm not sure they've gotten it.
Mine is:
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/fishyman2k5/
Discord: 408lurker
Steam: Tanaka
Discord: Tanaka
Quote from: Yskonyn on February 12, 2024, 02:43:37 AMOk, turns sent.
Very rough start for me. Don't think I'll last much longer with Mekone coming down on me like a warhammer. ☺️
Check your PMs recently?
I've got some fresh blood who's interested in playing our next game, presumably the Middle Age follow up when we call a winner here. She's not a Groghead, but groggy enough to grog with the rest of us grognards. If you catch my drift. :tophat:
Quote from: al_infierno on February 15, 2024, 02:15:18 AMI've got some fresh blood who's interested in playing our next game, presumably the Middle Age follow up when we call a winner here. She's not a Groghead, but groggy enough to grog with the rest of us grognards. If you catch my drift. :tophat:
Oh a she very interesting. I don't think we have ever had a female opponent in our games?
The demographics for this game definitely lean towards men playing it (similar to the Pdox games, though I think Crusader Kings is a bit less so than the others?), however there are some women who play Dominions at a high level in some of the Discord channels.
I'd be happy just having more players and maybe a bit less immediate "gank someone just for expanding well rather than finishing one's own expansion", lol.
I mentioned this to al-Infierno, but is it possible to set game conditions so that it is not the same every game - frantic expansion followed by instant war on the perceived Big Threat? It would be a change to have a game that required (or at least encouraged) economic and magical development before war was desirable. I know that things happen, circumstances change and personalities intrude, but every MP game I have played has been pretty much the same script. I am beginning to think you are all a bunch of violent warmongers :) Since I KNOW this is not true (wargames, grognards....hmmmm) it musty be the game conditions.
Stronger independents to retard expansion, force development to expand? Weaker independents so that expansion is more "equal"? I don't know. Comments? Have to stop ruminating, my wife is ordering me about...
The main problem with trying to enforce war incentives is that doing so has consequences that are not immediately obvious, but can distort games. For example, if you make indies stronger, you will *greatly* encourage particular awake expanders and nations that can handle clearing them. Anybody who builds anything else will lose before they play a turn, with a more extreme outcome in expansion disparity than we observed this game.
Weaker indies will level the expansion playing field, but it will also make it so fast that wars by t12-15 are an obvious choice...there's nothing else to fight, and players will then try to find their best matchup and go for it. (Edit: this type of setting also makes it possible for some nations to build an expansion-viable party every single turn, get > 20 provinces by like turn 8 with reasonable scales, and pile their sacreds + 300 archers onto a target by turn 13, just as an example of what tweaking settings can do).
One thing that will greatly help, however, is if everyone practices their expansion and knows the basics of their nation. I get that it's very early for Dominions 6, but under-expanding is one of the most consistent ways to be a sitting duck. There aren't many strategies for "try to beat that guy with 4x your assets" which tend to work out well (more possible as the game goes on, but not in early game wars). You need the other side to make multiple mistakes just to equalize.
I also disagree that economic and magic development aren't relevant in this game. Yes, having someone hit me before turn 15 influenced how I allocated resource to a degree, but I've still put up infrastructure and other players have too. Spells other than "blessing" and "divine blessing" have already had an impact on player combats in this game...both things I've cast, and forcing me to make estimates for what opponents are likely to have by now and which things I will probably have to deal with.
As an aside, I don't know how many games you've been in that go past turn 50-60, but those are not easy turns to script. There are interesting strategy and prediction aspects, but doing these turns quickly still takes > 30 minutes. Doing them WELL, as in something approximating a high skill lobby, might take 1-2 hours even if you're familiar with hotkeys. If you've ever played an astral nation where you're setting up communions with 60 mages in the fight on multiple fronts in a single turn and not only the magic you choose but the sequence (and whether you commit matrix items for t1 casts etc) all matter, you might not be so eager to run settings that encourage that haha.
-
All that theory aside, Xibalba attacked me this turn and lost 43 of 57 sacreds he sent slamming into my PG. He's corner positioned to me and orchestrated a 3v1 gank, so I'm not really in position to press his infrastructure, but maybe this information could be useful to others looking to become a significant player in the mid-late game...perhaps Xibalba could enjoy a little multi-front action too!
Quote from: TheMeInTeam on February 16, 2024, 04:38:14 PMAll that theory aside, Xibalba attacked me this turn and lost 48 of 57 sacreds he sent slamming into my PG. He's corner positioned to me and orchestrated a 3v1 gank, so I'm not really in position to press his infrastructure, but maybe this information could be useful to others looking to become a significant player in the mid-late game...perhaps Xibalba could enjoy a little multi-front action too!
I had a feeling that damn dragon of yours was gonna be a problem for me. :hair:
Interesting. Thanks for the response! I am hiding outside and my wife is inside, so i can sneak this off. What if... You made it a game condition that that all pretenders had to be imprisoned? How might that play out with different independent strengths? I am really curious to know if there is a way to influence the game so that no one is ready or wants a war until most players are in the middle or early-middle of the tech tree. Might not be possible. Number of starting provinces is another variable. I have little mp experience and almost none with some of these starting conditions. I have found that the answers to some of my questions are really illuminating. Rats! Busted. Gotta go.
You picked the fight knowing about it though :)! There are minor differences between particular drakons, but their package is petty consistent; solid but not spectacular prot, E/N self buffs, and then it will try to beat stuff down with high strength attacks or gas them.
To illustrate why I feel Solops is under-selling the strategy that goes into these early wars a bit: when you saw me win bump vs Ubar jinn warriors, that was a piece of evidence available...basically a demonstration that 18 slash wasn't (sufficiently) cutting it. When you positioned to attack me, I actually second guessed a bit, because sun guides barely hit harder and die a lot faster than jinn warriors. There are things sun guides can have on their bless that could kill it (most likely candidates being stacking something like +6 strength or thunder weapons), and I considered whether you might have one of them. I considered thunder weapons very unlikely because I can see you're mostly positive scales and it's an expensive incarnate. If you went dormant twep expansion would be awful because Xib needs help in expansion. I considered strength, but you actually have better scales than me (greedy!) which means even an imprisoned bless couldn't be too heavy. Unless strength was literally the only thing you built, you probably didn't have that. Thus, guessing it unlikely you had a bless that gave good odds to kill a drakon, I opted to move it to predicted attack province. If you had trashed scales, I absolutely would not have done that w/o confirming exactly what was on those.
A lot of moves require similar consideration. I correctly guessed the turn Ulm decided to move into my cap circle, and which province. This paid off, but it wasn't guaranteed. No choice in this game ever is. Ultimately you make predictions and measure relative risk vs potential reward. Speaking of Ulm, they just didn't have the body count since their peninsula start was pretty unfair and they had bad expansion on top of it. However, I was expecting to see more 2h stuff to hit through giants' protection, which is why I drummed up so many archers against them. Archers have a bad rep, but they're pretty good vs low-mid prot stuff w/o a shield. Ulm mostly stuck to the dual wield stuff, which is admittedly only a little worse if you don't have strength buff magic up yet (where 2h gets the 1.25x multiplier, thus iron warrior and steel warriors could have 30 damage with SoG, or more for steel with any strength on bless - this starts to be noticeably better vs stuff with protection than the dual wield setups).
I'm one or two wrong moves from getting overrun, but so far have managed to hold the upper hand on trades/positioning. So far.
-
Forcing imprisoned pretenders will again constrain nation choice. Don't forget that imprisoned was meta on many nations in Dom 5, might still be in Dom 6, and that nations which tend to abuse stat blesses like Pangaea or Marignon in MA would *LOVE* to have targets like MA Bandar or MA Xib where they can guarantee the enemy has no pretender before turn 30+. Bless up, run them down with 40-80 sacreds that have good prot, high damage, and like 20 def with full knowledge that (at best) the target can meet it with a PD dump and maybe a few rooting spells.
Granted, these kinds of sacreds are also very capable of killing pretender gods before turn 12 as well. But the option to put buffs on pretender, limit split raiding, and simply keep up with imprisoned stat bless sacred expansion keeps nations w/o an obviously strong troop chassis to bless in the game. We could still play "imprisoned only" rules of course, but it would basically make some nations unpickable. How confident is everyone in identifying which those are :)?
Unless skill is relatively level, it is more or less impossible to prevent an outcome that some players are "ready" for war before others. In some Dom 5 games, I saw players with level 8 magic by turn 40, despite winning wars. Having someone whip out foul vapors (enchantment 5) on turn 20-24 range was super common, in fact outright expected from some nations...and seeing it earlier wouldn't be shocking. Magic should already be a relevant part of strategies! I made some sacrifices there due to early wars, but still have useful things to cast.
Yeah, forcing imprisoned only would just have the opposite effect where expanders are basically useless and the "meta" would shift towards immobile or titans.
I don't think I even saw that bump actually, but yeah I figured a bunch of bat troops aren't taking on a dragon without some assistance. I suppose a little dragon dance helps take the pressure off Ulm a bit, but their prospect of survival still seems fairly low.
Quote from: al_infierno on February 16, 2024, 06:31:03 PMYeah, forcing imprisoned only would just have the opposite effect where expanders are basically useless and the "meta" would shift towards immobile or titans.
I don't think I even saw that bump actually, but yeah I figured a bunch of bat troops aren't taking on a dragon without some assistance. I suppose a little dragon dance helps take the pressure off Ulm a bit, but their prospect of survival still seems fairly low.
Dragon never set foot in Ulm's dominion and was never going to. Going out of dominion is dangerous, even though my bless doesn't mean much the lower max HP and stats certainly can. Kept expanding and doing border duty. Also gassing stuff is strong, unless it's your own stuff. I guess it's still strong then, but for the wrong side :p. Regardless, his titan of forge could take a piece of gear or two + a poison resist point buff and if I attacked into him with 4 candles of hostile dominion or something I'd get the drakon butchered in 1-2 rounds, easily faster than a reduced-strength drakon could kill it. Wrong tool for the job.
I think with imprisoned the tier 1 pretenders are likely the best, though it depends on nation. Tons of non-incarnate bless points, and the ability to forge/boost/summon using any path is handy. Even in Dom 5, most nations have multiple ways to kill supercombatant titans by turn 30s, and in Dom 6 my prediction is that's even easier now. For example any earth nation can put strength + sharpness on a passable chassis and even ridiculous prot like 36 gets chopped to 18...very easy to have more damage than that on weapons when strength is adding +4 or more. There are now mid-level AN poison spells too, in addition to AN lightning, fire, and water magic. It's hard to kit for everything and still have kit left over to tank basic hits. Moss body got heavily nerfed too, which makes "physmoss" less oppressive.
Those chassis still have a role for things like gem baits or "wind of death --> returning" type plays, but I think you could do some of this work with a tier 1 guy too. Especially now that there are more types of gear that give some hp.
I was chatting with one of the other players and floated another idea that I am currently testing out. I do not know how it would work out in MP, but it is giving me a really unusual solo experience and I think you all might find it entertaining. Starting with the idea of "what if there were NO indies?" I tried to set up a game. I found some limits. First the game does not allow you to assign more than 9 provinces to a nation at startup. And the minimum number of provinces that can be assigned in the map creation is 10 per nation. So, the closest I can get to a "No Indies" game is each nation starting with 9 provinces and there is one indy province floating about for each nation. So I started such a game. It is really, really different. Even vs the AI Thing One is diplomacy. Lots of money and turf. Low PD leading to lots of revolutions creating new indies. It is a really different experience so far. Oh, and I set the Indy strength to 10.
I would honestly just prefer to play the game normally but bump up the number of thrones a bit so people don't get desperate to secure a win quite so early. Otherwise, like you said, we're a bunch of warmongers and there's not much to be done about that :twirl:
Quote from: al_infierno on February 17, 2024, 12:01:59 AMI would honestly just prefer to play the game normally but bump up the number of thrones a bit so people don't get desperate to secure a win quite so early. Otherwise, like you said, we're a bunch of warmongers and there's not much to be done about that :twirl:
Sure! I'm not trying to twist any arms or sell you a used car. This idea popped up and in trying it out I am having an interesting time. It may not be suitable for MP. I don't know. But, If you are tired of beating up the AI in the same old way, give this a try for your next solo game and do it vs 6 or 7 Aggressive AIs. Never a dull moment!
Quote from: solops on February 16, 2024, 01:58:12 PMI mentioned this to al-Infierno, but is it possible to set game conditions so that it is not the same every game - frantic expansion followed by instant war on the perceived Big Threat? It would be a change to have a game that required (or at least encouraged) economic and magical development before war was desirable. I know that things happen, circumstances change and personalities intrude, but every MP game I have played has been pretty much the same script. I am beginning to think you are all a bunch of violent warmongers :) Since I KNOW this is not true (wargames, grognards....hmmmm) it musty be the game conditions.
Stronger independents to retard expansion, force development to expand? Weaker independents so that expansion is more "equal"? I don't know. Comments? Have to stop ruminating, my wife is ordering me about...
Frantic expansion followed by war on the weakest or the strongest. This is Dominions lol.
Quote from: TheMeInTeam on February 16, 2024, 04:38:14 PMThe main problem with trying to enforce war incentives is that doing so has consequences that are not immediately obvious, but can distort games. For example, if you make indies stronger, you will *greatly* encourage particular awake expanders and nations that can handle clearing them. Anybody who builds anything else will lose before they play a turn, with a more extreme outcome in expansion disparity than we observed this game.
Weaker indies will level the expansion playing field, but it will also make it so fast that wars by t12-15 are an obvious choice...there's nothing else to fight, and players will then try to find their best matchup and go for it. (Edit: this type of setting also makes it possible for some nations to build an expansion-viable party every single turn, get > 20 provinces by like turn 8 with reasonable scales, and pile their sacreds + 300 archers onto a target by turn 13, just as an example of what tweaking settings can do).
One thing that will greatly help, however, is if everyone practices their expansion and knows the basics of their nation. I get that it's very early for Dominions 6, but under-expanding is one of the most consistent ways to be a sitting duck. There aren't many strategies for "try to beat that guy with 4x your assets" which tend to work out well (more possible as the game goes on, but not in early game wars). You need the other side to make multiple mistakes just to equalize.
I also disagree that economic and magic development aren't relevant in this game. Yes, having someone hit me before turn 15 influenced how I allocated resource to a degree, but I've still put up infrastructure and other players have too. Spells other than "blessing" and "divine blessing" have already had an impact on player combats in this game...both things I've cast, and forcing me to make estimates for what opponents are likely to have by now and which things I will probably have to deal with.
As an aside, I don't know how many games you've been in that go past turn 50-60, but those are not easy turns to script. There are interesting strategy and prediction aspects, but doing these turns quickly still takes > 30 minutes. Doing them WELL, as in something approximating a high skill lobby, might take 1-2 hours even if you're familiar with hotkeys. If you've ever played an astral nation where you're setting up communions with 60 mages in the fight on multiple fronts in a single turn and not only the magic you choose but the sequence (and whether you commit matrix items for t1 casts etc) all matter, you might not be so eager to run settings that encourage that haha.
-
All that theory aside, Xibalba attacked me this turn and lost 43 of 57 sacreds he sent slamming into my PG. He's corner positioned to me and orchestrated a 3v1 gank, so I'm not really in position to press his infrastructure, but maybe this information could be useful to others looking to become a significant player in the mid-late game...perhaps Xibalba could enjoy a little multi-front action too!
Great points about tweaks to the game. Tweaking magic research and economy also really affects things this way.
So Ulm attacked you first? That is very surprising if he had bad expansion? If so that was a very bad move. I saw an indy province in his cap circle the whole game yikes.
Orchestrated a 3vs1 gank? You mean Ulm, Bats, and Me? Ulm attacked you and you attacked me lol. I don't think he orchestrated anything.
Quote from: TheMeInTeam on February 16, 2024, 05:52:06 PMYou picked the fight knowing about it though :)! There are minor differences between particular drakons, but their package is petty consistent; solid but not spectacular prot, E/N self buffs, and then it will try to beat stuff down with high strength attacks or gas them.
To illustrate why I feel Solops is under-selling the strategy that goes into these early wars a bit: when you saw me win bump vs Ubar jinn warriors, that was a piece of evidence available...basically a demonstration that 18 slash wasn't (sufficiently) cutting it. When you positioned to attack me, I actually second guessed a bit, because sun guides barely hit harder and die a lot faster than jinn warriors. There are things sun guides can have on their bless that could kill it (most likely candidates being stacking something like +6 strength or thunder weapons), and I considered whether you might have one of them. I considered thunder weapons very unlikely because I can see you're mostly positive scales and it's an expensive incarnate. If you went dormant twep expansion would be awful because Xib needs help in expansion. I considered strength, but you actually have better scales than me (greedy!) which means even an imprisoned bless couldn't be too heavy. Unless strength was literally the only thing you built, you probably didn't have that. Thus, guessing it unlikely you had a bless that gave good odds to kill a drakon, I opted to move it to predicted attack province. If you had trashed scales, I absolutely would not have done that w/o confirming exactly what was on those.
A lot of moves require similar consideration. I correctly guessed the turn Ulm decided to move into my cap circle, and which province. This paid off, but it wasn't guaranteed. No choice in this game ever is. Ultimately you make predictions and measure relative risk vs potential reward. Speaking of Ulm, they just didn't have the body count since their peninsula start was pretty unfair and they had bad expansion on top of it. However, I was expecting to see more 2h stuff to hit through giants' protection, which is why I drummed up so many archers against them. Archers have a bad rep, but they're pretty good vs low-mid prot stuff w/o a shield. Ulm mostly stuck to the dual wield stuff, which is admittedly only a little worse if you don't have strength buff magic up yet (where 2h gets the 1.25x multiplier, thus iron warrior and steel warriors could have 30 damage with SoG, or more for steel with any strength on bless - this starts to be noticeably better vs stuff with protection than the dual wield setups).
I'm one or two wrong moves from getting overrun, but so far have managed to hold the upper hand on trades/positioning. So far.
-
Forcing imprisoned pretenders will again constrain nation choice. Don't forget that imprisoned was meta on many nations in Dom 5, might still be in Dom 6, and that nations which tend to abuse stat blesses like Pangaea or Marignon in MA would *LOVE* to have targets like MA Bandar or MA Xib where they can guarantee the enemy has no pretender before turn 30+. Bless up, run them down with 40-80 sacreds that have good prot, high damage, and like 20 def with full knowledge that (at best) the target can meet it with a PD dump and maybe a few rooting spells.
Granted, these kinds of sacreds are also very capable of killing pretender gods before turn 12 as well. But the option to put buffs on pretender, limit split raiding, and simply keep up with imprisoned stat bless sacred expansion keeps nations w/o an obviously strong troop chassis to bless in the game. We could still play "imprisoned only" rules of course, but it would basically make some nations unpickable. How confident is everyone in identifying which those are :)?
Unless skill is relatively level, it is more or less impossible to prevent an outcome that some players are "ready" for war before others. In some Dom 5 games, I saw players with level 8 magic by turn 40, despite winning wars. Having someone whip out foul vapors (enchantment 5) on turn 20-24 range was super common, in fact outright expected from some nations...and seeing it earlier wouldn't be shocking. Magic should already be a relevant part of strategies! I made some sacrifices there due to early wars, but still have useful things to cast.
Yes I expected my Jinn warriors to hold up better than that...
But that is so true about Dominions and what makes it so great. So many things you have to consider like you mentioned...
Quote from: Tanaka on February 17, 2024, 02:13:55 AMQuote from: TheMeInTeam on February 16, 2024, 04:38:14 PMThe main problem with trying to enforce war incentives is that doing so has consequences that are not immediately obvious, but can distort games. For example, if you make indies stronger, you will *greatly* encourage particular awake expanders and nations that can handle clearing them. Anybody who builds anything else will lose before they play a turn, with a more extreme outcome in expansion disparity than we observed this game.
Weaker indies will level the expansion playing field, but it will also make it so fast that wars by t12-15 are an obvious choice...there's nothing else to fight, and players will then try to find their best matchup and go for it. (Edit: this type of setting also makes it possible for some nations to build an expansion-viable party every single turn, get > 20 provinces by like turn 8 with reasonable scales, and pile their sacreds + 300 archers onto a target by turn 13, just as an example of what tweaking settings can do).
One thing that will greatly help, however, is if everyone practices their expansion and knows the basics of their nation. I get that it's very early for Dominions 6, but under-expanding is one of the most consistent ways to be a sitting duck. There aren't many strategies for "try to beat that guy with 4x your assets" which tend to work out well (more possible as the game goes on, but not in early game wars). You need the other side to make multiple mistakes just to equalize.
I also disagree that economic and magic development aren't relevant in this game. Yes, having someone hit me before turn 15 influenced how I allocated resource to a degree, but I've still put up infrastructure and other players have too. Spells other than "blessing" and "divine blessing" have already had an impact on player combats in this game...both things I've cast, and forcing me to make estimates for what opponents are likely to have by now and which things I will probably have to deal with.
As an aside, I don't know how many games you've been in that go past turn 50-60, but those are not easy turns to script. There are interesting strategy and prediction aspects, but doing these turns quickly still takes > 30 minutes. Doing them WELL, as in something approximating a high skill lobby, might take 1-2 hours even if you're familiar with hotkeys. If you've ever played an astral nation where you're setting up communions with 60 mages in the fight on multiple fronts in a single turn and not only the magic you choose but the sequence (and whether you commit matrix items for t1 casts etc) all matter, you might not be so eager to run settings that encourage that haha.
-
All that theory aside, Xibalba attacked me this turn and lost 43 of 57 sacreds he sent slamming into my PG. He's corner positioned to me and orchestrated a 3v1 gank, so I'm not really in position to press his infrastructure, but maybe this information could be useful to others looking to become a significant player in the mid-late game...perhaps Xibalba could enjoy a little multi-front action too!
Great points about tweaks to the game. Tweaking magic research and economy also really affects things this way.
So Ulm attacked you first? That is very surprising if he had bad expansion? If so that was a very bad move. I saw an indy province in his cap circle the whole game yikes.
Orchestrated a 3vs1 gank? You mean Ulm, Bats, and Me? Ulm attacked you and you attacked me lol. I don't think he orchestrated anything.
Well, I did technically attack first in game terms, but the underlying reason is a lot more nuanced. :)
Mekone and Ulm tried to engage in diplomacy pretty much at the same time, but it was quite clear Mekone was out for war. Ulm tried to get some leverage by taking a province from Mekone (which looked to be undefended when the decision was made) where this province would be given back to Mekone after diplo. Just to stress the importance of Ulm keeping a certain other border province which served as a very nice chokepoint in between mountain ranges.
The turn after it was clear that Mekone either sprung a trap or Ulm just made an unfortunate move, which wiped out the expansion army whole.
Mekone already had told Ulm that there was no reason to hold back and would press on Ulms provinces without any diplomatic agreements viable (and rightly so, considering Mekone's position vs Ulms expansion).
Due to the hampered expansion of Ulm and frankly not expecting such an aggressive game right from the start, there really wasn't much I feel I could do as Ulm to just consolidate and try to rally all troops back to Cap to try our luck there in defense.
It doesn't seem we will hold much longer, though.
Quote from: Tanaka on February 17, 2024, 02:13:55 AMOrchestrated a 3vs1 gank? You mean Ulm, Bats, and Me? Ulm attacked you and you attacked me lol. I don't think he orchestrated anything.
Ulm attacked out of necessity in his position. His account is true/pretty much consistent with mine. I had good expansion and he struggled (due to combination of build and crummy start position). By the time we met, we already had border problems that were unlikely to be resolved.
The only thing Ulm was mistaken about is my mindset right at the start of conflict. I anticipated that he'd attack me sooner or later, because I had inadvertently boxed him in and his only alternative route to anybody else was through the water. Thus if he wanted to grow, it was me or nothing. For that reason and that he was small, I did have him pegged as first war, but a number of turns later. What I wasn't expecting was aggression before he finished expansion phase. But he left units on border, signaled failed diplo and that indies weren't his priority, and I guessed I was probably getting attacked. A good chunk of my units weren't in position yet, but I figured I'd get attacked on that turn and guessed the most likely province, so I upped PD there a bit and sent troops. It was a trap, but one I set at the literal last moment. That's also why when pushing into his territory I used that army to take an indy province that was out of the way; it gave the rest of the army I cobbled together for an early knife fight based on the diplo some time to catch up and consolidate. As for why I opted to just fight right away after that...well he lost 60+ guys in that first attack w/o killing any of my national troops, and the economic disparity from expansion was overwhelming.
You ended NAP with me. There is no world where that doesn't imply hostile intentions in Dominions games. When you do that, you signal that either a) you intended to attack the moment the NAP ends or b) you intend to attack at the first moment you consider it opportunistic/gainful (aka if I send troops literally anywhere else, you could freely raid me to hell).
To the extent the 3v1 was orchestrated it, however, that would be by Xibalba, not you or Ulm! It is highly atypical in MP games for corner-positioned players to fight, because of the difficulty in movement logistics and that even a successful campaign would expose the winning nation to many angles of attack. It was pretty obvious to me when Xib delayed a turn for "diplo" then you ended NAP what happened there, and also fairly easily confirmed by simply requesting a NAP from Xib and seeing what the answer was. If I was mistaken, he'd have no reason to refuse it (it would be strictly favorable to his position if he didn't plan to attack). I'd have preferred to be mistaken, but I've played and seen enough games cast where it would have been a surprise if I were.
Quote from: Yskonyn on February 17, 2024, 10:36:50 AMQuote from: Tanaka on February 17, 2024, 02:13:55 AMQuote from: TheMeInTeam on February 16, 2024, 04:38:14 PMThe main problem with trying to enforce war incentives is that doing so has consequences that are not immediately obvious, but can distort games. For example, if you make indies stronger, you will *greatly* encourage particular awake expanders and nations that can handle clearing them. Anybody who builds anything else will lose before they play a turn, with a more extreme outcome in expansion disparity than we observed this game.
Weaker indies will level the expansion playing field, but it will also make it so fast that wars by t12-15 are an obvious choice...there's nothing else to fight, and players will then try to find their best matchup and go for it. (Edit: this type of setting also makes it possible for some nations to build an expansion-viable party every single turn, get > 20 provinces by like turn 8 with reasonable scales, and pile their sacreds + 300 archers onto a target by turn 13, just as an example of what tweaking settings can do).
One thing that will greatly help, however, is if everyone practices their expansion and knows the basics of their nation. I get that it's very early for Dominions 6, but under-expanding is one of the most consistent ways to be a sitting duck. There aren't many strategies for "try to beat that guy with 4x your assets" which tend to work out well (more possible as the game goes on, but not in early game wars). You need the other side to make multiple mistakes just to equalize.
I also disagree that economic and magic development aren't relevant in this game. Yes, having someone hit me before turn 15 influenced how I allocated resource to a degree, but I've still put up infrastructure and other players have too. Spells other than "blessing" and "divine blessing" have already had an impact on player combats in this game...both things I've cast, and forcing me to make estimates for what opponents are likely to have by now and which things I will probably have to deal with.
As an aside, I don't know how many games you've been in that go past turn 50-60, but those are not easy turns to script. There are interesting strategy and prediction aspects, but doing these turns quickly still takes > 30 minutes. Doing them WELL, as in something approximating a high skill lobby, might take 1-2 hours even if you're familiar with hotkeys. If you've ever played an astral nation where you're setting up communions with 60 mages in the fight on multiple fronts in a single turn and not only the magic you choose but the sequence (and whether you commit matrix items for t1 casts etc) all matter, you might not be so eager to run settings that encourage that haha.
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All that theory aside, Xibalba attacked me this turn and lost 43 of 57 sacreds he sent slamming into my PG. He's corner positioned to me and orchestrated a 3v1 gank, so I'm not really in position to press his infrastructure, but maybe this information could be useful to others looking to become a significant player in the mid-late game...perhaps Xibalba could enjoy a little multi-front action too!
Great points about tweaks to the game. Tweaking magic research and economy also really affects things this way.
So Ulm attacked you first? That is very surprising if he had bad expansion? If so that was a very bad move. I saw an indy province in his cap circle the whole game yikes.
Orchestrated a 3vs1 gank? You mean Ulm, Bats, and Me? Ulm attacked you and you attacked me lol. I don't think he orchestrated anything.
Well, I did technically attack first in game terms, but the underlying reason is a lot more nuanced. :)
Mekone and Ulm tried to engage in diplomacy pretty much at the same time, but it was quite clear Mekone was out for war. Ulm tried to get some leverage by taking a province from Mekone (which looked to be undefended when the decision was made) where this province would be given back to Mekone after diplo. Just to stress the importance of Ulm keeping a certain other border province which served as a very nice chokepoint in between mountain ranges.
The turn after it was clear that Mekone either sprung a trap or Ulm just made an unfortunate move, which wiped out the expansion army whole.
Mekone already had told Ulm that there was no reason to hold back and would press on Ulms provinces without any diplomatic agreements viable (and rightly so, considering Mekone's position vs Ulms expansion).
Due to the hampered expansion of Ulm and frankly not expecting such an aggressive game right from the start, there really wasn't much I feel I could do as Ulm to just consolidate and try to rally all troops back to Cap to try our luck there in defense.
It doesn't seem we will hold much longer, though.
Thanks for sharing the view from the Ulm side very interesting! You must hold!
I thought I saw that the giant Mekone army sieging you had left? Or was there a battle lost?
Quote from: TheMeInTeam on February 17, 2024, 02:57:22 PMQuote from: Tanaka on February 17, 2024, 02:13:55 AMOrchestrated a 3vs1 gank? You mean Ulm, Bats, and Me? Ulm attacked you and you attacked me lol. I don't think he orchestrated anything.
Ulm attacked out of necessity in his position. His account is true/pretty much consistent with mine. I had good expansion and he struggled (due to combination of build and crummy start position). By the time we met, we already had border problems that were unlikely to be resolved.
The only thing Ulm was mistaken about is my mindset right at the start of conflict. I anticipated that he'd attack me sooner or later, because I had inadvertently boxed him in and his only alternative route to anybody else was through the water. Thus if he wanted to grow, it was me or nothing. For that reason and that he was small, I did have him pegged as first war, but a number of turns later. What I wasn't expecting was aggression before he finished expansion phase. But he left units on border, signaled failed diplo and that indies weren't his priority, and I guessed I was probably getting attacked. A good chunk of my units weren't in position yet, but I figured I'd get attacked on that turn and guessed the most likely province, so I upped PD there a bit and sent troops. It was a trap, but one I set at the literal last moment. That's also why when pushing into his territory I used that army to take an indy province that was out of the way; it gave the rest of the army I cobbled together for an early knife fight based on the diplo some time to catch up and consolidate. As for why I opted to just fight right away after that...well he lost 60+ guys in that first attack w/o killing any of my national troops, and the economic disparity from expansion was overwhelming.
You ended NAP with me. There is no world where that doesn't imply hostile intentions in Dominions games. When you do that, you signal that either a) you intended to attack the moment the NAP ends or b) you intend to attack at the first moment you consider it opportunistic/gainful (aka if I send troops literally anywhere else, you could freely raid me to hell).
To the extent the 3v1 was orchestrated it, however, that would be by Xibalba, not you or Ulm! It is highly atypical in MP games for corner-positioned players to fight, because of the difficulty in movement logistics and that even a successful campaign would expose the winning nation to many angles of attack. It was pretty obvious to me when Xib delayed a turn for "diplo" then you ended NAP what happened there, and also fairly easily confirmed by simply requesting a NAP from Xib and seeing what the answer was. If I was mistaken, he'd have no reason to refuse it (it would be strictly favorable to his position if he didn't plan to attack). I'd have preferred to be mistaken, but I've played and seen enough games cast where it would have been a surprise if I were.
Very interesting early game dynamics! Yes I ended NAP as I had to prepare to start making strategic decisions. Also I ended NAP in the hopes of giving Ulm some relief as you might divert some troops back to my border. I did not attack though and you came for me which was in your right. Thus war. But yes not having a NAP leaves things very open to whatever intent which was my ultimate goal. You needed to be distracted from Ulm. I will say that the Bats did not orchestrate me to do this as this was my own decision. But the Bats definitely also decided you needed distraction as well. Don't you just love what goes on behind the scenes in Dominions MP games? No other game has such diplomatic flavor :pirate:
There seems to be a misconception about how strategic mobility works. There's nothing that can happen in a war between us (or Xib) where anything I have on the Ulm front can contribute in the next 4-5 turns. It takes time to move stuff. It's a completely unrealistic expectation to think I would ever, under any circumstances, pull troops from the Ulm front before it's finished. That choice would be me choosing to lose deliberately. The reason I met you and Xib immediately was not because I took stuff off that front. You have to have some ability to answer on your borders at all times in Dominions. It's one of two big reasons MA Ulm, despite being popular to advocate to beginners, is actually pretty tough to play in MP. Moving stuff takes ages, so the nation's de facto troop count per frontage shrinks after expansion. The other is that they need matrix items to play the late game, and that's a burden.
What you have managed to do is force me to pull gold that would go into infrastructure to keep making troops. However, you also sacrificed infra to make troops. Xibalba less so, he has at least 3 forts now, which I will not have unless I capture Ulm. He will out tech us given enough time, or he would if he didn't decide it's better to sacrifice his own win % to lower mine rather than trying to win the game :/.
Quote from: Tanaka on February 17, 2024, 03:31:42 PMI thought I saw that the giant Mekone army sieging you had left? Or was there a battle lost?
Moving from there would mean it takes 4+ turns to get to our front, and give him the ability to lift siege and make more stuff. It would be incredibly stupid for me to do that lol.
I stormed him previous turn and technically lost...I'm actually not sure why I HP routed first, I suspect it's because I brought so much chaff and it was hostile dominion. Fortunately for me, almost all of his non-fort PD army also routed and made it off the field before everything of mine did. Thus I got to keep most of the retreating stuff. When troops retreat in forts it's a 100% kill, so I THINK I win storm this time. We shall see!
Quote from: TheMeInTeam on February 17, 2024, 08:04:31 PMI stormed him previous turn and technically lost...I'm actually not sure why I HP routed first, I suspect it's because I brought so much chaff and it was hostile dominion. Fortunately for me, almost all of his non-fort PD army also routed and made it off the field before everything of mine did. Thus I got to keep most of the retreating stuff. When troops retreat in forts it's a 100% kill, so I THINK I win storm this time. We shall see!
Yep I figured. I guess Ulm will be done next turn...
Quote from: TheMeInTeam on February 17, 2024, 08:04:31 PMThere seems to be a misconception about how strategic mobility works. There's nothing that can happen in a war between us (or Xib) where anything I have on the Ulm front can contribute in the next 4-5 turns. It takes time to move stuff. It's a completely unrealistic expectation to think I would ever, under any circumstances, pull troops from the Ulm front before it's finished. That choice would be me choosing to lose deliberately. The reason I met you and Xib immediately was not because I took stuff off that front. You have to have some ability to answer on your borders at all times in Dominions. It's one of two big reasons MA Ulm, despite being popular to advocate to beginners, is actually pretty tough to play in MP. Moving stuff takes ages, so the nation's de facto troop count per frontage shrinks after expansion. The other is that they need matrix items to play the late game, and that's a burden.
What you have managed to do is force me to pull gold that would go into infrastructure to keep making troops. However, you also sacrificed infra to make troops. Xibalba less so, he has at least 3 forts now, which I will not have unless I capture Ulm. He will out tech us given enough time, or he would if he didn't decide it's better to sacrifice his own win % to lower mine rather than trying to win the game :/.
Quote from: Tanaka on February 17, 2024, 03:31:42 PMI thought I saw that the giant Mekone army sieging you had left? Or was there a battle lost?
Moving from there would mean it takes 4+ turns to get to our front, and give him the ability to lift siege and make more stuff. It would be incredibly stupid for me to do that lol.
Anything diverted from Ulm was my goal
Quote from: TheMeInTeam on February 17, 2024, 08:04:31 PMThere seems to be a misconception about how strategic mobility works. There's nothing that can happen in a war between us (or Xib) where anything I have on the Ulm front can contribute in the next 4-5 turns. It takes time to move stuff. It's a completely unrealistic expectation to think I would ever, under any circumstances, pull troops from the Ulm front before it's finished. That choice would be me choosing to lose deliberately. The reason I met you and Xib immediately was not because I took stuff off that front. You have to have some ability to answer on your borders at all times in Dominions. It's one of two big reasons MA Ulm, despite being popular to advocate to beginners, is actually pretty tough to play in MP. Moving stuff takes ages, so the nation's de facto troop count per frontage shrinks after expansion. The other is that they need matrix items to play the late game, and that's a burden.
What you have managed to do is force me to pull gold that would go into infrastructure to keep making troops. However, you also sacrificed infra to make troops. Xibalba less so, he has at least 3 forts now, which I will not have unless I capture Ulm. He will out tech us given enough time, or he would if he didn't decide it's better to sacrifice his own win % to lower mine rather than trying to win the game :/.
Quote from: Tanaka on February 17, 2024, 03:31:42 PMI thought I saw that the giant Mekone army sieging you had left? Or was there a battle lost?
Moving from there would mean it takes 4+ turns to get to our front, and give him the ability to lift siege and make more stuff. It would be incredibly stupid for me to do that lol.
Diverting troops from reinforcing the siege and sending troops to my border was my goal. I did not think you would stop sieging.
What I sent to Ulm was already more than I could supply though. Even if you guys did nothing, I sent too much!
Quote from: TheMeInTeam on February 18, 2024, 03:04:04 PMWhat I sent to Ulm was already more than I could supply though. Even if you guys did nothing, I sent too much!
Well damn if you can afford to send troops to all fronts I guess we are all screwed lol. But that is the advantage of full scales I guess. Nice battle btw unfortunately I did not have my prophet but at least I scattered your troops temporarily a little bit. Hopefully that will at least slow you down a bit. I really need those bats to do something! Haha
Just waiting on you now :grin:
Quote from: Yskonyn on February 17, 2024, 10:36:50 AMQuote from: Tanaka on February 17, 2024, 02:13:55 AMQuote from: TheMeInTeam on February 16, 2024, 04:38:14 PMThe main problem with trying to enforce war incentives is that doing so has consequences that are not immediately obvious, but can distort games. For example, if you make indies stronger, you will *greatly* encourage particular awake expanders and nations that can handle clearing them. Anybody who builds anything else will lose before they play a turn, with a more extreme outcome in expansion disparity than we observed this game.
Weaker indies will level the expansion playing field, but it will also make it so fast that wars by t12-15 are an obvious choice...there's nothing else to fight, and players will then try to find their best matchup and go for it. (Edit: this type of setting also makes it possible for some nations to build an expansion-viable party every single turn, get > 20 provinces by like turn 8 with reasonable scales, and pile their sacreds + 300 archers onto a target by turn 13, just as an example of what tweaking settings can do).
One thing that will greatly help, however, is if everyone practices their expansion and knows the basics of their nation. I get that it's very early for Dominions 6, but under-expanding is one of the most consistent ways to be a sitting duck. There aren't many strategies for "try to beat that guy with 4x your assets" which tend to work out well (more possible as the game goes on, but not in early game wars). You need the other side to make multiple mistakes just to equalize.
I also disagree that economic and magic development aren't relevant in this game. Yes, having someone hit me before turn 15 influenced how I allocated resource to a degree, but I've still put up infrastructure and other players have too. Spells other than "blessing" and "divine blessing" have already had an impact on player combats in this game...both things I've cast, and forcing me to make estimates for what opponents are likely to have by now and which things I will probably have to deal with.
As an aside, I don't know how many games you've been in that go past turn 50-60, but those are not easy turns to script. There are interesting strategy and prediction aspects, but doing these turns quickly still takes > 30 minutes. Doing them WELL, as in something approximating a high skill lobby, might take 1-2 hours even if you're familiar with hotkeys. If you've ever played an astral nation where you're setting up communions with 60 mages in the fight on multiple fronts in a single turn and not only the magic you choose but the sequence (and whether you commit matrix items for t1 casts etc) all matter, you might not be so eager to run settings that encourage that haha.
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All that theory aside, Xibalba attacked me this turn and lost 43 of 57 sacreds he sent slamming into my PG. He's corner positioned to me and orchestrated a 3v1 gank, so I'm not really in position to press his infrastructure, but maybe this information could be useful to others looking to become a significant player in the mid-late game...perhaps Xibalba could enjoy a little multi-front action too!
Great points about tweaks to the game. Tweaking magic research and economy also really affects things this way.
So Ulm attacked you first? That is very surprising if he had bad expansion? If so that was a very bad move. I saw an indy province in his cap circle the whole game yikes.
Orchestrated a 3vs1 gank? You mean Ulm, Bats, and Me? Ulm attacked you and you attacked me lol. I don't think he orchestrated anything.
Well, I did technically attack first in game terms, but the underlying reason is a lot more nuanced. :)
Mekone and Ulm tried to engage in diplomacy pretty much at the same time, but it was quite clear Mekone was out for war. Ulm tried to get some leverage by taking a province from Mekone (which looked to be undefended when the decision was made) where this province would be given back to Mekone after diplo. Just to stress the importance of Ulm keeping a certain other border province which served as a very nice chokepoint in between mountain ranges.
The turn after it was clear that Mekone either sprung a trap or Ulm just made an unfortunate move, which wiped out the expansion army whole.
Mekone already had told Ulm that there was no reason to hold back and would press on Ulms provinces without any diplomatic agreements viable (and rightly so, considering Mekone's position vs Ulms expansion).
Due to the hampered expansion of Ulm and frankly not expecting such an aggressive game right from the start, there really wasn't much I feel I could do as Ulm to just consolidate and try to rally all troops back to Cap to try our luck there in defense.
It doesn't seem we will hold much longer, though.
We're just waiting on you now for this turn, BTW :grin:
Ulm is done for. One less pretender to worry about.
Interesting to read all viewpoint on the whole situation! Quite fun.
I wish you all the best of luck in the game!
Do I need to do anything other for admin purposes in the game itself in order to get out of your way?
Quote from: Yskonyn on February 19, 2024, 05:19:35 AMUlm is done for. One less pretender to worry about.
Interesting to read all viewpoint on the whole situation! Quite fun.
I wish you all the best of luck in the game!
Do I need to do anything other for admin purposes in the game itself in order to get out of your way?
Your pretender and his dominion is gone. Nothing left to do. Good game and thanks for playing. We will now face the giant tidal wave ourselves. See you in the next one!
I'm the one facing a tidal wave! I've been looking over shoulder, trying to block raiding on multiple fronts, or outright fighting war for like half the game, none of them chosen on my terms!
If you want to see something pretty brutal, try the fight from last turn w/o me having the PD dump to help buy time and provide harassment against jinn/ifrit for the gigante. Mekone would have been beaten like a drum. I've had tough choices for several turns in a row. Feels like a mid game war!
However, if I'm locked into such a conflict, I will not go quietly. I only ask that my gankers get to enjoy a similar experience :)!
Quote from: TheMeInTeam on February 19, 2024, 02:13:08 PMI'm the one facing a tidal wave! I've been looking over shoulder, trying to block raiding on multiple fronts, or outright fighting war for like half the game, none of them chosen on my terms!
If you want to see something pretty brutal, try the fight from last turn w/o me having the PD dump to help buy time and provide harassment against jinn/ifrit for the gigante. Mekone would have been beaten like a drum. I've had tough choices for several turns in a row. Feels like a mid game war!
However, if I'm locked into such a conflict, I will not go quietly. I only ask that my gankers get to enjoy a similar experience :)!
Well that has been the whole point of everything was to at least give you tough choices. Otherwise the game would be too easy for you haha. Yes that PD dump was very well placed. It certainly won the battle for you. At least I am making you spend money not on more giants. Now that you have taken Ulm and prevented the bats from doing anything not too much to look over the shoulder for. Agartha is hiding in caves and not helping. Lanka is non-existent. You are winning no one is ganking you lol.
Quote from: Yskonyn on February 19, 2024, 05:19:35 AMUlm is done for. One less pretender to worry about.
Interesting to read all viewpoint on the whole situation! Quite fun.
I wish you all the best of luck in the game!
Do I need to do anything other for admin purposes in the game itself in order to get out of your way?
Hope to see you in the next game! Better luck on the mapgen next time.
We'll most likely do Middle Age, so start thinking about who you want to play! :RockOn:
Agartha is finally catching up a bit to all the other better players and plans to come out of his cave soon. I finally got some scouts out to see the world for myself. With all parties involved telling me that I should do certain things, things that are quite beyond my current means, AND that their opponents are overwhelmingly powerful, I'd be silly not to look for myself. The downside is being too late, but I have been stampeded into rash action before. It did not end well. On the plus side, you can all give yourselves a gold star for being very persuasive! I am very confused.
Food for thought:
If a 2v1 against me is such a problem that it requires howling every turn to make it a 3v1 again...where are Xibalba's mages in this conflict?
So far, I have seen one of his cap only mages alongside a raiding party, a bunch of sun guides, and a ton of chaff. Xibalba hasn't committed a single serious combat spell against any player for the entirety of the game. Yet he cries for help against a nation that is forced into using over half of them...
Ubar has properly fought all in so far, and between the strong troops and assassin play it's been tough. But rather than committing as well, Xib remains the nation with the most forts in the game with 5. In a supposed all out war to stop a runaway, he's constructed multiple forts, slammed mages, and sent practically none of them at Mekone.
It's been a masterful piece of diplo work, trying to use other players to buy time for research. But that also creates a problem. I'm big and apparently scary. However, I am not tech leader and by far lack magic hardware as the game goes on, and there remains basically nobody on the board who can fight a 20-25 province blood power with techs 5-7. Xib is only a few provinces short of that, right now, with the best scales of any nation (including magic scales).
So far I haven't really encountered anything of yours except your dragon and PD. Committing mages to PD raids doesn't seem worth the risk if I can achieve the same result with chaff and one of my cap-only thugs. Of course I'm sure that'll change once your proper armies show up...
The fact that the only thing you've "committed" to doing is raiding is why you've only met PD and the drakon to kill a few thousand gold worth of your stuff.
In this allegedly existential-threat situation meriting diplo specifically to coalition someone, the only thing your nation has done was try to get me to spend a bit more money defending myself from raids. You didn't send stuff capable of killing drakon (which is difficult, but possible for both you and Ubar on early techs), or commit enough mages and gems where it was possible to say kill 40+ gigante in one fight. You could have done that, if you actually wanted to. Then it wouldn't be "just raiding PD". If paying the cost was worth it to you, I could have seen 30 baby fire elementals or hundreds of skeletons in a fight 9 turns ago. But this clearly wasn't worth it on your cost evaluation. Ubar and Agartha should both consider why it is that wasn't worth it to you...why you were not all in on a war you convinced him to join. Why you still aren't all-in on a war you're begging yet more players to join.
There is nothing I can field which is 100% safe against fully committed mages available to Xibalba with ~turn 15-20 levels of tech. But this requires you to risk them, against troops or drakon, like I did. Like Ubar did. Instead, so far your nation has been hiding behind other players sacrificing themselves for you while you build more infrastructure than I can conquer and hitting the books for more than a dozen turns meanwhile. To be clear: if I conquered Ubar's cap next turn (which is impossible and requires at least one more major fight that hasn't happened yet), I will still be way behind on research and have exactly the same number of forts with less magic scales...even with all of that, my RP/turn and mage count will be slower than Xib. The timetable to convert a money advantage into more infrastructure and catch up with research is long...longer still for a nation with exactly 0 national access to any sorcery paths.
I'm sure "when my armies show up", they will be greeted by multiple spells in the 5-7 range bolstered by blood sabbath to cast them. Ubar's sacrifice has given you all the time in the world to build infrastructure and get there w/o anybody accosting you on those pure scales.
I ask Agartha to consider: would you rather fight lots of good troops with lackluster mages, or a bunch of level 7 magic with lifelong protections + skelly spam behind rigor mortis? Agartha may or may not be kingmaker in this position, I'm actually not sure. It depends to what extent either or both of us could fend off his armies while still at war with the other. I think that *right now*, I could do better because I have put more gold into troops to defending myself and I have better troops. In 5-10 turns, that's probably not true any more, because tons of bats can eat olm mind blasts inexpensively and rigor will make them stop shooting pretty fast (50 fatigue threshold for natural ranged attacks). This isn't MA where a pile of statues just get to ignore rigor...
You're assuming a lot about where my tech is at. My mages have pretty weak research, even with strong magic scales. I'm not about to thoroughly explain what I have and haven't researched, but if skelly spam was an option at this point I would have been using it already.
Assuming? I'm *calculating it*.
Outside your cap, you are most likely recruiting camazotz, because those are your best mage. They cost 225, well within your ability to afford on ~16 provinces with 4 forts and 1 palisades (soon 5 forts) while still making troops and some commander recruitment outside of forts.
Each one of those is 13 RP/turn, but you have magic 2. Thus each one is 15 RP/turn. Recruiting from 4 forts/turn, you add 60 RP/turn, aggregating at that rate. 10 turns of that equates to 600 RP/turn, plus whatever you had from first turns of recruitment. But you'll have 5 forts soon, and whatever your cap is recruiting is adding to this.
The simple reality is that there's a good chance you *already* have the ability to tech from 0 to 4 in a single turn. If not, you're there within a couple turns at most.
Even if I make insanely optimistic calcs (for the rest of us) and assume you're literally recruiting nothing but 9 base RP guys (which research for you at 11), you've had them sitting in labs with a fort lead for long enough that you'd have to be a bit over 600 RP/turn right now. This means that if you've literally researched nothing all game (which isn't true), you could have a level 6 tech in 5 turns, with a second level 6 tech even faster because RP/turn continues to increase.
Most likely, you already have at least one 5, and could easily have 2.
All of this is relatively easy to math out because...well...I don't have to factor you losing any mages whatsoever. Because you haven't used them or moved them much. Any small delays from making a lab or temple in your new forts are well within the margins of the math here. Unless Ubar goes AI instantly or something, it is basically impossible that anybody will fight you seriously before you get multiple techs 5+, with at least one 7. You can try to claim otherwise, but you'd have to convince us that you stopped recruiting mages for some reason. Not buying it. You didn't make that infrastructure rather than units to look pretty. You tech rushed, and managed to convince Ubar to sac for extra time.
My initial calculus of you throwing to attack me early was mistaken...because you were not seriously attacking me, only stalling my progress against your sacrifice while you surpassed me in infrastructure :D. Now the question is how quickly I can untangle, what Agartha prefers to fight in late game, and whether I myself can come up with any countermeasures against the techs and tactics I used to win previous games (which are now in your hands!) using less RP/turn + gold advantage. I can add at best 11 RP/fort myself, and I have fewer. I'll always be behind you in research this game, which unfortunately for me means this is far from over.
I considered the possibility that you've been recruiting cheap B1 guys to hunt for slaves, but best I can tell, you're not setting up blood econ, rather tech rushing. Since I've built scouts, that much is obvious since they're not getting nuked by blood hunting + patrolling setups all over the place.
Small silver lining is that apparently wailing winds got moved to glamour. So we "only" have to deal with a smattering of blood stuff, a bunch of earth buffs, rigor mortis, darkness (for me, Agartha doesn't care about darkness), cloud of death, wind of death, fog warriors, and fire storm using low tech. No big deal, right?
Edit: skelly spam is already an option at enchantment 3. You can already research that in a single turn by now, and could easily have teched it during the time Ubar ended NAP even with 0 investment in enchantment prior. It's only 350 cumulative RP.
Your calculations are quite generous! Keep in mind the rest of us don't quite have the encyclopedic knowledge of the game that you do. :wink:
If I really must blow up my strategy to convince you I'm not quite the existential threat you think I am, I've gone about 50/50 on research and blood econ, and ended up somewhat weak in both regards at this point. I'm also doing quite a bit of site searching to build up an economy of fire, earth, and death gems for items and spells later down the line, so I don't have anywhere near 600 RP per turn, even if I were to stop all my mages from what they're doing and research.
The problem is that you can easily add > 60 RP/turn, right now. More than 70/turn once that 5th palisades is upgraded to fort. And you *must* already have hundreds, I'd put money on >400 RP/turn right now. You can turn off blood hunting at the drop of a hat; if you're doing that at all, it's got to be mostly in the forts. I have scouts in the non-fort provinces, and they're not soaking up slaves. This is why I'm talking about tech threat and not 100 hell blessed ozzies...you're clearly going for the former overall, not the latter.
And yes, I'm sure you want earth boots, gems to cast and protect from firestorm, and gems to make death summons + cast rigor mortis. That's why I'm pointing out the threat such a tech disparity poses. If I'm stuck fighting 7s with 5s I'm going to need every drop of gold I can get and it might not be enough, even if Agartha doesn't pile on.
A number of Grogs games back, Ajidica's Mictlan was freaking massive, but behind on tech. Initially Agartha and I attacked him, but my tech lead was so decisive that I rolled up a big fraction of his territory like a blanket across 5-6 turns or so after winning a few fights really decisively. This quickly resulted in first W8aminute, then Solops turning on me. It was already far too late. They were roasted alive since I had my first tech 8 in the early turn 40s before Mictlan war even started, and multiple tech 8s by the time Agartha changed sides. By the time Agartha and I had a doomstack fight, I had a couple liches casting instant kill spells. This despite being ~2/3 of Mictlan's size at most before that fight started, probably not even that. Siekster actually accused me of throwing by ganking him first in that game along with Mictlan (he picked Sceleria though, so he needed to die as tip-top priority). Instead, I won that game based on the tech lead and that's what started the meta-diplo against me ever since :p. That's how scaling into a tech advantage goes...and you're on pace for that. You have BETTER magic scales than I had in that game, and just as many forts. By just recruiting mages on your scales, you add more RP/turn in this game than I could then. And I slapped down a few earth kings with SC kit in the t40s.
Now I'm in Mictlan's position, and you're a couple indy provinces from being in mine in that game. I will not be complacent, and I will not be fooled! You don't need intimate knowledge of all the Dominions interactions to recruit a mage in your forts each turn, and we don't need a PHD in math to figure out how much that can amount to :D.
And yes, you and I are the top existential threats in the game right now, with Agartha in 3rd. Unless Agartha can grow super fast by taking out Lanka/clearing out the water in a few turns, it is effectively impossible for him to 1v1 either of us. I can drum up way too much garbage to attract olm mind blasts away from gigante, and you can alternate between threat of bats diving into melee with olms immediately, doing skelly spam, or just raiding the absolute crap out of him because his stuff is really slow. For 5 turns anyway, before you just cast rigor mortis and make the olms stop shooting in a few rounds.
He's in a tough spot. If I kill you while he does nothing, his position is unwinnable, but I'm not sure I can do it. If you + him manage to push me back, it functionally guarantees he loses unless he gets something like 70-80%% of those spoils...Agartha simply doesn't have the chops to hang vs late a game blood power at roughly similar province count. They need to be significantly bigger or have a tech lead. Agartha would get neither by ganking me with you, even if you guys won. By far best chances for Agartha was to conquer Lanka and the water while we were faffing about these last 9 turns or so, then be attacking you right now. Just wasn't fast enough tempo for that, but I guess that's the story of this game generally so far.
Well, all I've got to say about that is...I having fun playing a neat game!
Quote from: solops on February 21, 2024, 07:15:07 PMWell, all I've got to say about that is...I having fun playing a neat game!
Sometimes playing online makes me feel like Cheech and Chong dropped into the Game of Thrones world.
Wait, what's going on, man? We're at war? Aw, man...
GG everyone! My Pretender, Prophet, and Kingdom have all been defeated. TheMeInTeam is once again champion of Dominions. I learned a lot as always! :notworthy:
Good luck to Agartha and Xibalba against the onslaught of giants!
Well fought indeed, gg! Corruption/seductions are always annoying to deal with, but you really bled me in the fights too. I would probably have lost the fight outside the cap if I didn't bring air gems just to crush into lightning bolts. Despite the 5 SR, at least those got rid of unseen on like half the ifrit warriors.
Ubar's stuff is really powerful, but also really expensive.
It's kind of sad that despite archers shooting into ethereal and some prot, they're STILL more likely to pop unseen than almost anything else I can do lol. I don't think I've ever played in a game where it's been useful to recruit so many indy archers, but until I have enough to convince Xib to cast air shield onto his armies they're useful against every other matchup...not a lot of big shields out there and at early techs the mages can only air shield themselves.
It's too early to crown me champion though. I managed another good outcome vs Xib this turn, but a good % of his mages and research is still intact even though this fight cut that down significantly for the first time. I have some plans on how to handle the tech deficit, and now that I've seen blood letting that's another thing I'll need to deal with, though that has to be used sparingly with bats in the fight. Importantly, throne positions do not favor either me or Xib...barring multiple army wipes it looks like it's one more 1v2 grind, mostly disregarding thrones...and plans rarely survive contact. Do I get hit with darkness? Rigor + skelly spam? Something else? We'll see. So far, I only have evidence of blood 5 from Xib. Even I have a 5 though, so there's still something extra lurking I suspect.
Lanka you know you wanna attack Xib for fun just to get in on the action!
We could use a sub for Agartha in this game. He's fairly large and in a pretty decent position to contend. Would anybody be interested in subbing in for him?
Quote from: al_infierno on February 26, 2024, 04:58:04 PMWe could use a sub for Agartha in this game. He's fairly large and in a pretty decent position to contend. Would anybody be interested in subbing in for him?
What happened? Battle fright?
Quote from: Tanaka on February 26, 2024, 08:54:33 PMQuote from: al_infierno on February 26, 2024, 04:58:04 PMWe could use a sub for Agartha in this game. He's fairly large and in a pretty decent position to contend. Would anybody be interested in subbing in for him?
What happened? Battle fright?
His excuse is that some stupid thing called "real life" got in the way. As if Dominions is not life. What a coward. :doh:
Quote from: al_infierno on February 26, 2024, 10:12:40 PMQuote from: Tanaka on February 26, 2024, 08:54:33 PMQuote from: al_infierno on February 26, 2024, 04:58:04 PMWe could use a sub for Agartha in this game. He's fairly large and in a pretty decent position to contend. Would anybody be interested in subbing in for him?
What happened? Battle fright?
His excuse is that some stupid thing called "real life" got in the way. As if Dominions is not life. What a coward. :doh:
Well that is a shame. I was looking forward to hearing the tales of battles to come...
To be fair, it's not like the armies Solops raised will disappear when the sub takes over, and it's not much of a secret where they're likely headed considering that Agartha has NAP with all but one nation...
It was strangely difficult to find someone to sub in for a fairly strong position late-game contender. Oh well.
I made the executive decision to replace Agartha with AI. May god have mercy on their pretender's soul.
Quote from: al_infierno on February 29, 2024, 01:00:26 AMIt was strangely difficult to find someone to sub in for a fairly strong position late-game contender. Oh well.
I made the executive decision to replace Agartha with AI. May god have mercy on their pretender's soul.
Um you could have asked me. I would have subbed. Lol
Is it possible to change it back to a player?
Quote from: Tanaka on February 29, 2024, 01:35:12 AMQuote from: al_infierno on February 29, 2024, 01:00:26 AMIt was strangely difficult to find someone to sub in for a fairly strong position late-game contender. Oh well.
I made the executive decision to replace Agartha with AI. May god have mercy on their pretender's soul.
Um you could have asked me. I would have subbed. Lol
Is it possible to change it back to a player?
Shit I thought I did ask you. :hair:
Other than solar weapons, Agartha's build is pretty reasonable. I would definitely advocate picking up alteration 4-5 before construction 5, if at this level of tech restriction. Con 3 gets dwarven hammers and enough gear to work with already, and the spell options from alt 4 and 5 are too good to pass up for slightly better gear.
Which con 3 gear to use depends on matchup. GSS gives +4 atk/def, stacks with Agartha's +3 atk bless, and with quickness totals to +9. Oracle swings at 17 atk like that, or 21 with burning pearl. That's getting into territory where it will tend to hit elves on average, hits everything else vast majority of swings, and with strength boost we're talking > 42 AP slash per. 4-5 of these operating in/around ancient ones could put in a ton of work against my stuff but also anybody else's. Obviously if making thug kit you'd take salt vs Ubar. Salt is AoE, DGAF about invis, and will pop it.
Reasonable alternative kit options: coral blade for hp threshold on Agartha's regen bless + bleed effect, lightning rod (if there was a big air nation in the game that might slam elementals out), hammer of the mountains (would be good vs Ulm since they're not big enough to resist the stun effect, and 40+ bludgeoning damage would kill their stuff even w/o sharpness), smasher (if shatter weren't enough vs Ubar lol), and eye catcher (bad news for drakon, though olms are already bad news for drakon by itself and likely hold it still for long enough for regular crap to just walk up and kill it).
As for armor, you probably just want low enc stuff like fire plate + flame helmet. Not a ton of con 3 boots options, but +5 strength won't hurt. Could also just run the weapon + armor/helmet + burning pearl w/o more support and use the gems on other things though.
Reason to use alt 5 is you get stuff like quickness mentioned above, but also temper flesh + for non-gear oracles they can earth power into casting maws of the earth at low fatigue (great vs anybody but Ubar and Xib), shatter vs inanimate (bad news for stuff like monolith or Ubar's pretender), and AoE shock resistance. Also allows casting FR onto army with Olm sages, so there's some value to alt 5 in every matchup in this game for Agartha that I don't think con 5 can match with gear.
I'd probably take conj 5 over con 5 too, umbrals and elementals each add extra things to deal with and both give some counterplay vs rigor mortis if/when Xib were to cast that, so it'd be useful to have handy if needed.
Quote from: al_infierno on February 29, 2024, 10:34:13 AMQuote from: Tanaka on February 29, 2024, 01:35:12 AMQuote from: al_infierno on February 29, 2024, 01:00:26 AMIt was strangely difficult to find someone to sub in for a fairly strong position late-game contender. Oh well.
I made the executive decision to replace Agartha with AI. May god have mercy on their pretender's soul.
Um you could have asked me. I would have subbed. Lol
Is it possible to change it back to a player?
Shit I thought I did ask you. :hair:
I thought I read somewhere you can switch back to a player...
Quote from: Tanaka on February 29, 2024, 03:06:38 PMQuote from: al_infierno on February 29, 2024, 10:34:13 AMQuote from: Tanaka on February 29, 2024, 01:35:12 AMQuote from: al_infierno on February 29, 2024, 01:00:26 AMIt was strangely difficult to find someone to sub in for a fairly strong position late-game contender. Oh well.
I made the executive decision to replace Agartha with AI. May god have mercy on their pretender's soul.
Um you could have asked me. I would have subbed. Lol
Is it possible to change it back to a player?
Shit I thought I did ask you. :hair:
I thought I read somewhere you can switch back to a player...
I'll check when I get home from work, but the popup in game said it's irreversible. I believe we would have to roll back to the previous turn.
I would prefer not to redo 2 turns if possible. Another issue is now I've seen tons of information about Agartha I didn't have before (exact bless, was told the research, had a fight vs them)...it would be scuffed to undo the turn move orders and have both sides get troops back.
My vote is to just keep going with this game so al_infierno and I can fight it out/practice fighting/scripting in Dom 6 context and start the next MA game concurrently. More action, and it prevents dead players/those waiting to join from waiting further.
Quote from: TheMeInTeam on February 29, 2024, 04:05:42 PMI would prefer not to redo 2 turns if possible. Another issue is now I've seen tons of information about Agartha I didn't have before (exact bless, was told the research, had a fight vs them)...it would be scuffed to undo the turn move orders and have both sides get troops back.
My vote is to just keep going with this game so al_infierno and I can fight it out/practice fighting/scripting in Dom 6 context and start the next MA game concurrently. More action, and it prevents dead players/those waiting to join from waiting further.
I like the idea of going ahead and starting a new MA game while you and I play out the EA game.
Quote from: al_infierno on February 29, 2024, 03:12:38 PMQuote from: Tanaka on February 29, 2024, 03:06:38 PMQuote from: al_infierno on February 29, 2024, 10:34:13 AMQuote from: Tanaka on February 29, 2024, 01:35:12 AMQuote from: al_infierno on February 29, 2024, 01:00:26 AMIt was strangely difficult to find someone to sub in for a fairly strong position late-game contender. Oh well.
I made the executive decision to replace Agartha with AI. May god have mercy on their pretender's soul.
Um you could have asked me. I would have subbed. Lol
Is it possible to change it back to a player?
Shit I thought I did ask you. :hair:
I thought I read somewhere you can switch back to a player...
I'll check when I get home from work, but the popup in game said it's irreversible. I believe we would have to roll back to the previous turn.
Maybe from the administrator menu?
Game has been won congrats to Mekone! Now lets get the new one started so he can win again! :notworthy:
Congrats, TMIT! :Party:
GG all!
I was tempted to pick a water nation next just to not get piled, but hopefully I can at least avoid perma-war after turn 13 with Bandar Log!
Quote from: TheMeInTeam on March 05, 2024, 10:23:10 PMGG all!
I was tempted to pick a water nation next just to not get piled, but hopefully I can at least avoid perma-war after turn 13 with Bandar Log!
No water nations and pop kill nations please! Hard enough to beat you!
Thing about water nations is that they're hard to beat, but most of them are also hard to win with.
Popkill is annoying, but aside from Lemuria (which gets reasonable tech and ethereal freespawn) IMO it's hard to make a case that any of them are unusually scary compared to other nations. It isn't just that their winrate stats aren't special, even looking at them from a lens of "what can this nation do at turn 15, 30, 45, 60" framework they don't stand out.
MA Ermor for example has dogwater tech, is extremely vulnerable to magic duel if it somehow does get tech (blocking most useful magic it might otherwise cast in battle with national mages), and is thus relegated to trying to win using hell blessed sacreds. Hell blessed sacreds are scary on turn 12, but not so much at turn 50 where mass regen relief prot buff troops can hack through arbitrarily large numbers of skeletons and heal off blood vengeance damage. The only real reason Ermor is a pain is just that they're not worth conquering, but that's not a ringing endorsement for a nation. It's also hard to convince players to believe it. I got fearmongered like crazy for rushing Siekster's Lemuria in the LA game, taking a severe diplo tax for maybe 5000 population and a bunch of death gems/turn, just because I had a lot of flags...flags which did not come cheaply.
If someone picks Sceleria, then by all means get them off the board ASAP. That's a non-popkill that has many times the skeletons of Ermor *and* magic it can use behind them, including fog warriors and mass flight. Nazca and every MA blood nation outscale MA Ermor too. I get that being the person a popkill attacks feels bad though. You can only make them lose, you don't really win by taking their stuff. But if you convince a somewhat decent player they can't make headway, they *should* look elsewhere. Otherwise, players throwing to coalition a popkill is *great*, as long as you're not one of those involved.
Quote from: TheMeInTeam on March 06, 2024, 03:04:34 PMThing about water nations is that they're hard to beat, but most of them are also hard to win with.
Popkill is annoying, but aside from Lemuria (which gets reasonable tech and ethereal freespawn) IMO it's hard to make a case that any of them are unusually scary compared to other nations. It isn't just that their winrate stats aren't special, even looking at them from a lens of "what can this nation do at turn 15, 30, 45, 60" framework they don't stand out.
MA Ermor for example has dogwater tech, is extremely vulnerable to magic duel if it somehow does get tech (blocking most useful magic it might otherwise cast in battle with national mages), and is thus relegated to trying to win using hell blessed sacreds. Hell blessed sacreds are scary on turn 12, but not so much at turn 50 where mass regen relief prot buff troops can hack through arbitrarily large numbers of skeletons and heal off blood vengeance damage. The only real reason Ermor is a pain is just that they're not worth conquering, but that's not a ringing endorsement for a nation. It's also hard to convince players to believe it. I got fearmongered like crazy for rushing Siekster's Lemuria in the LA game, taking a severe diplo tax for maybe 5000 population and a bunch of death gems/turn, just because I had a lot of flags...flags which did not come cheaply.
If someone picks Sceleria, then by all means get them off the board ASAP. That's a non-popkill that has many times the skeletons of Ermor *and* magic it can use behind them, including fog warriors and mass flight. Nazca and every MA blood nation outscale MA Ermor too. I get that being the person a popkill attacks feels bad though. You can only make them lose, you don't really win by taking their stuff. But if you convince a somewhat decent player they can't make headway, they *should* look elsewhere. Otherwise, players throwing to coalition a popkill is *great*, as long as you're not one of those involved.
My solution which I wish they would implement with the new terraforming mechanic is allow undead wastelands to grow back with growth. As it is now you can terraform everything except for wastelands. I think this would be very fun and refreshing and give people a reason to allow pop kill nations in MP games as there would be a mechanic to reverse 0 pop provinces and grow them back with growth scales...
There's a mod that adds pop back if you clear out a popkill called rebirth. We can try that out at some point, but nobody seems to want popkill in this one anyway. Asphodel got a bunch of updates just now, but they only protect 1000 pop in forts so they're still pretty much popkill too.