[Dominions 6] Grogspocalypse: The Return! (FINISHED)

[solops]

Well, all I've got to say about that is...I having fun playing a neat game!

[al_infierno]

Well, 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...

[Tanaka]

GG everyone! My Pretender, Prophet, and Kingdom have all been defeated. TheMeInTeam is once again champion of Dominions. I learned a lot as always! 

Good luck to Agartha and Xibalba against the onslaught of giants!

[TheMeInTeam]

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!

[al_infierno]

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?

[Tanaka]

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?

What happened? Battle fright?

[al_infierno]

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?

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.   

[Tanaka]

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?

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.   

Well that is a shame. I was looking forward to hearing the tales of battles to come...

[TheMeInTeam]

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...

[al_infierno]

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.

[Tanaka]

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.

Um you could have asked me. I would have subbed. Lol

Is it possible to change it back to a player?

[al_infierno]

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.

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. 

[TheMeInTeam]

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.

[Tanaka]

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.

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. 

I thought I read somewhere you can switch back to a player...

[al_infierno]

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.

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. 

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.