Okay, let me pitch Dominions 5 to you

[houlio]

Wait, Houlio submitted his after the patch too, if his commentary on his turn is any indication.

Yeah, I submitted after the patch. It should all be good.

[Olinser]

Wait, Houlio submitted his after the patch too, if his commentary on his turn is any indication.

OK great then, I'll go ahead and turn auto-host back on that means we're just waiting on deuterio to submit his turn and we're ready to roll on 4v4.

EDIT: And for the larger game, I think that leaves us just Ionbound to confirm he has updated his turn and we're good to go there as well.

[Olinser]

OK in the 4v4 despite the re-submissions something very weird did happen - I won a battle, but AFTER the enemy routed my commanders suddenly decided to run... so I ended up winning the battle, and owning the province but my commanders retreated to another square.

Not necessarily that big a deal in itself, but if anybody else had weird stuff happen should we roll back the turn?

[The Hellbug]

I've had that happen before--frequently because retreating guys get cut off in a close battle and, while fighting their way out, your army's morale fails. I didn't notice anything weird this turn. Now, last turn there was a changing battle replay after I updated, but the results stayed the same.

[Nadevoc]

OK in the 4v4 despite the re-submissions something very weird did happen - I won a battle, but AFTER the enemy routed my commanders suddenly decided to run... so I ended up winning the battle, and owning the province but my commanders retreated to another square.

Not necessarily that big a deal in itself, but if anybody else had weird stuff happen should we roll back the turn?

I've had similar happen a few times in a non-email game - once, I had both sides armies route. My guys were slower getting off the field, so I won!

Did your commanders have any effects on them that could cause them to route? Or maybe the enemy had some barbarians or something that kept hitting the commanders after their army had routed?

[Grif]

I've had similar happen a few times in a non-email game - once, I had both sides armies route. My guys were slower getting off the field, so I won!

Did your commanders have any effects on them that could cause them to route? Or maybe the enemy had some barbarians or something that kept hitting the commanders after their army had routed?

I seen this happen in Dominions 4, so it's not entirely unknown. (And probably working as intended.)

[Knaight]

I've had similar happen a few times in a non-email game - once, I had both sides armies route. My guys were slower getting off the field, so I won!

I've won due to both armies retreating, but I had one troop with a limp who was the last off the field.

[Olinser]

Yeah I posted this before discussion, I mean it does make sense as to exactly how the battle went, i just never saw somebody decide to run AFTER the enemy was routing. Bit annoying but as long as yall are good no reason to mess with turns.

[Olinser]

I've had that happen before--frequently because retreating guys get cut off in a close battle and, while fighting their way out, your army's morale fails. I didn't notice anything weird this turn. Now, last turn there was a changing battle replay after I updated, but the results stayed the same.

Yeah analyzing the battle replay what LOOKS like happened is that the first commander retreated normally in the course of battle, then the 2nd commander continued fighting, the enemy routed, and they got about 10 squares away when he failed a morale check presumably from the wound he got much earlier in the battle, and just barely got off the field when the enemy finished retreating. It was just weird because only the commander ran - the normal troops kept chasing the enemy.

It was just so weird that I took control of a province and there are only troops with no commander in that province. But like I said /shrug, it does make sense with the replay, just a little annoying because I'll have to sweep through with a commander to pick em up.

[The Hellbug]

Yeah, the troops don't retreat from lack of commander unless there are no commanders on the battlefield--the fact that the commander might be running like a coward is of no importance to them

Well, that is, until he's gone, at which point everybody immediately decides cowardice is the way of the day.

I've actually run into that 'whoever flees last wins' situation a lot in Dom 5 while experimenting with expansion with Xibalba--the fact that your guys fly ends up biting you in the butt because once they go, even if the enemy's fleeing, your own commander way back where hits the '% of army hit points lost auto-rout trigger' and runs as well.

[Olinser]

So what's your guys thoughts on the new faction.

I'm pretty unimpressed - their national bonus is a bonus to Dominion conflict, but they aren't particularly well suited to a domkill as their only non-level 1 priest they can get costs 325 because he's also a mage AND is slow-to-recruit to boot. Then the unrest caused by their forts is really bad, and they have a really rough early game because their 'normal' troops have such terrible morale and their giant troops are incredibly resource intensive on top of being limited in recruitment, and they don't have any actual sacred troops.

Other thoughts? They just don't seem to be very good at anything.

[deuterio12]

They have a special event where 1/year forts with an Ephor will spawn a giant assassin that kills a bunch of pop and lowers unrest, then can be used for whatever you want.

The base troops have horrible morale base yes, but several of the commanders have taskmaster plus good leadership to bring it to decent levels.

The discus throwers aren't too shabby to help with expansion either from what I've heard.

No sacred giants is a feature but all the mages are sacreds so go with mage bless?

[Aeson]

So what's your guys thoughts on the new faction.

I'm pretty unimpressed - their national bonus is a bonus to Dominion conflict, but they aren't particularly well suited to a domkill as their only non-level 1 priest they can get costs 325 because he's also a mage AND is slow-to-recruit to boot. Then the unrest caused by their forts is really bad, and they have a really rough early game because their 'normal' troops have such terrible morale and their giant troops are incredibly resource intensive on top of being limited in recruitment, and they don't have any actual sacred troops.

Other thoughts? They just don't seem to be very good at anything.

I agree that they don't seem to be particularly good at anything, and that I'm inclined to pass on the giant troops. I'd note that the dominion conflict bonus makes it safer to take relatively low dominion scores, and that their priests are all inquisitors (double priest level for preaching against foreign dominion).

As far as what to do with them goes, I'd be inclined to go for an Imprisoned F4A4E4 Eldest Cyclops with Order 2, Production 2, Growth 3, Magic 3, and spend the bless points on Inspiring Presence, 4xPrecision, and 2xReinvigoration, or a Dormant F4E4 Statue of War with much the same scales and bless. Turn your starting Lochos into your prophet and recruit a bunch more helots, and recruit Gerontes when you're gold-limited and Ephoroi when you're resource/recruitment-point-limited to get research going quickly. Lochoi will be okay for the expansion armies, but if you can afford them I'd be inclined to go for Polemarchs, both to make use of Inspiring Presence and because they'll let you deploy battle magic as soon as you research it. Works decently in single player, though it might have issues in multiplayer.

An awake expander might also be a decent option, but in my limited testing thus far Mekone seems to do okay at expanding with helots if you can mass enough of them in a reasonable time (I suggest using helot ekdromoi, or if you're really resource-starved helot peltasts, as your front line and backing them up with a line of helot peltasts on fire closest) and I think if anything I'd sooner take more dominion or more scales than an awake expander.

As regards the morale of their helots, yeah, it's not great, but I don't think it's as bad as you're suggesting. The Lochoi and Polemarchs have Taskmaster 2, which gives the helots 9 morale before the leadership bonus (+1 for Lochoi, +2 for Polemarchs), and your prophet can give his army Sermons of Courage to help a bit more. Later in the game, if you're still feeling that your armies' morale sucks, your national mages can forge Helmets of Heroes (Inspiring Presence +2) or Crowns of the Titans (Inspiring Presence +1, Leadership +50), and N is pretty common on indies and will get you access to Horns of Valor (Inspiring Presence +1), Rat Tails (Taskmaster +1), and Whips of Command (Leadership +100, Taskmaster +3, Inspiring Presence -2, for a net of +1 morale to slaves but -2 morale for non-slaves).

The discus throwers aren't too shabby to help with expansion either from what I've heard.

They aren't awful, but in my experience quantity matters a lot more than quality for ranged units, and at 30 gold and a cap of four per turn per fort, you're not going to have them in quantity for quite a while. They'll help, sure, but honestly I'd rather spend the gold on either more helots or on a Polemarch, especially if I have enough research for e.g. Fire Blast. Might roast a few helots with it, but eh, they're cheap.

[The Hellbug]

Yo, for those two games I'm in: I will be unable to reach a computer from this evening to Sunday evening. I think that will definitely merit a delay on the pairs disciple game, but the 4v4 game may be okay if the new turn gets sent in the next 6-8 hours or so. Otherwise, that'll have to wait for Sunday as well. I'll let you all know when I return.

[Olinser]

Yo, for those two games I'm in: I will be unable to reach a computer from this evening to Sunday evening. I think that will definitely merit a delay on the pairs disciple game, but the 4v4 game may be okay if the new turn gets sent in the next 6-8 hours or so. Otherwise, that'll have to wait for Sunday as well. I'll let you all know when I return.

The turn is out now for the pairs, you could put it in now and be covered unless you're waiting for some coordination to complete it.

[deuterio12]

Auto-host for the 4x4 seems to still be off.

[Olinser]

Auto-host for the 4x4 seems to still be off.

Llamaservers is having problems, auto-host is still on (I just checked to make sure) but they have disabled ALL turn hosting until they fix it.

If you look at the next turn time you'll notice that the host time keeps moving backwards.

It's happened a couple times before, last time I think it took them about a day to fix it. Just watch your email and the turn will host as soon as the server comes back up.

[Olinser]

Yo, for those two games I'm in: I will be unable to reach a computer from this evening to Sunday evening. I think that will definitely merit a delay on the pairs disciple game, but the 4v4 game may be okay if the new turn gets sent in the next 6-8 hours or so. Otherwise, that'll have to wait for Sunday as well. I'll let you all know when I return.

OK well due to the delays it looks like the 4v4 turn isn't due until Monday morning about 10 AM EST, can you make that or do I need to push it back another day?

[Vitruviansquid]

I haven't tried Mekone yet, but it seems like pairing inaccurate, high-damage projectiles with an armored infantry core is a shockingly bad idea to me.

[Aeson]

I haven't tried Mekone yet, but it seems like pairing inaccurate, high-damage projectiles with an armored infantry core is a shockingly bad idea to me.

It might not be a great idea, but I wouldn't call it a shockingly bad idea, certainly not as ideas go in Dominions 5 (a shockingly bad idea would be something along the lines of using Earthquake to support an army of ~10HP or less units with low protection and none of the abilities that provide immunity to or partially negate the damage that the spell can do, such as flying or floating, without first casting a spell to protect against Earthquake damage; bonus 'shockingly bad idea' points for doing this with a big stack of expensive slow-to-recruit capital-only mages). For starters, assuming that the front lines are actual lines, the pattern will fall mostly on the enemy's side of the battlefield (3 tile deviation at 14+ range for a 25-tile pattern, of which 16 tiles will be on the enemy's side if the central tile is at the very front of the enemy's line; 2 tile deviation at range 7+ for a 13 tile pattern, of which 8 tiles will be on the enemy's side of the battlefield if the central tile is at the very front of the enemy's line; 1-tile deviation at range 3+ for a five tile pattern, of which four tiles will be on the enemy's side), and the distribution over the pattern is supposed to be Gaussian centered on the central tile, so it's even more likely that the enemy side will be hit than a comparison of tile counts would suggest. If the discoboloi are not targeting the very front of the enemy's line (which wouldn't greatly surprise me; Dominions 4 calculated an expected damage at potential target locations when determining which tile a spell should target, and I wouldn't be too surprised if something similar were done for ranged attacks) but are instead targeting something slightly further back in the enemy formation, the likelihood of a shot falling short and hitting your own troops would be further reduced. There's also the issue that Discoboloi have very little ammunition - just four discuses - and are rather severely limited in numbers at no more than four per month per fort, so the friendly fire damage that they can do is rather limited, especially by comparison to the friendly fire damage that a corps of battle mages can do with the right (or wrong, depending on how you look at it) spells.

Plus, compared to, say, a flagellant suicide bomber build for Marignon (especially one that doesn't try to do something about the potential for fratricide), a bit of friendly fire from a handful of Discoboloi is nothing.

[The Hellbug]

Alright, I'm back and turns are in.

[Olinser]

Alright, I'm back and turns are in.

Sweet. Auto host is still on for the 4v4 so were good there

[deuterio12]

Haha, and I had just thrown another 12 hour delay just in case. Well, Abysia and Marignon didn't send yet either, plus llamaserver seems to be having some troubles again.

[Olinser]

Haha, and I had just thrown another 12 hour delay just in case. Well, Abysia and Marignon didn't send yet either, plus llamaserver seems to be having some troubles again.

Yeah there seems to be a recurring problem with llamaserver hopefully it will get fixed soon

[Olinser]

Haha, and I had just thrown another 12 hour delay just in case. Well, Abysia and Marignon didn't send yet either, plus llamaserver seems to be having some troubles again.

I also kind of feel like at this point the turn should just go through. If it goes out on the current scheduled time it will have been 4 full days for this turn and Hellbug was the only one that asked for a delay, and he's put his turn in.

[deuterio12]

Heads up, the 4v4 turn hosted a bit of time ago, so it seems like llamaserver is working normally, only that they forgot to remove the warning. Marignon and Abysia still need to send their turns or if they have a good reason for delay, please speak up.

[Olinser]

Heads up, the 4v4 turn hosted a bit of time ago, so it seems like llamaserver is working normally, only that they forgot to remove the warning. Marignon and Abysia still need to send their turns or if they have a good reason for delay, please speak up.

Yep they've even removed the warning now so I assume they just forgot to take it off Saturday when they finished fixing the server.

Just Marignon left now.

[deuterio12]

Lord_Khaine has taken command of Marignon due to the absence of their previous leader.

Also I'll be having a big travel in about 12 hours from now. I'll be sending my 4v4 turn before that so there should be no big problem, but warning just in case.

[Olinser]

Lord_Khaine has taken command of Marignon due to the absence of their previous leader.

Also I'll be having a big travel in about 12 hours from now. I'll be sending my 4v4 turn before that so there should be no big problem, but warning just in case.

No worries just send me a forum PM here or a PM on Discord if you aren't going to be able to make the next one, depending on when Fomoria and Hinnom send in their turns it will be late Thursday-Friday the next turn is due.

[Olinser]

It looks like Deuterio has pushed back the deadline for the pairs game, so I am assuming he's still travelling. Go ahead and submit your turns for the 4v4 game, I'll keep an eye on it and if he hasn't submitted by tomorrow morning I'll go ahead and push the deadline back a day there as well.

EDIT: Never mind he's back and submitted both his turns so we're just waiting on Berytos now for the 4v4.