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

[TheMeInTeam]

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.

[al_infierno]

New turn's in.  I'm marked as unfinished since I have a diplo message out there.

[solops]

New turn's in.  I'm marked as unfinished since I have a diplo message out there.

Ditto

[al_infierno]

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

[Tanaka]

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

Steam: Tanaka
Discord: Tanaka

[al_infierno]

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. ☺️

Check your PMs recently?

[al_infierno]

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.   

[Tanaka]

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.   

Oh a she very interesting. I don't think we have ever had a female opponent in our games?

[TheMeInTeam]

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.

[solops]

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...

[TheMeInTeam]

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.

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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!

[al_infierno]

All 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.   

[solops]

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.

[TheMeInTeam]

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.

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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.

[al_infierno]

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.