Conquest of Elysium 4

[pakoito]

Also, for those not in the know: use the load option --battlereports

So much better. Now I just wish they had a battle stats screen as well.

What does it exactly do?

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

Huh, this is actually good? I wanted to like CoE3 but playing it was the pinnacle of "why does this exist".

 

[Haba]

Let me start by saying that enchanter is shit.

I had a nice roll with it tho. Those undead snake golems are really, really nice. I destroyed two AI players in one turn with an army of 50. The second AI attacked me just as I had finished of the first one, with an army of 200 barbarians. By that point I had 30 units left. In the end, less than ten guys wiped out the entire army. That battlefield wide sleep spell man.

Then the god damn Hades event came. Entire map filled with invisible stacks of dispossed spirits who proceed to take over all resource nodes and undefended villages. Such great fun, 15 turns of shitty drudgery follows.

Finally the event ends and I proceed to retake my resources. My epic survivor stack chases spirits. Second later I check the tile: "frozen lake"...

...

...

"Spring has come"

 

[Agesilaus]

Also, for those not in the know: use the load option --battlereports

So much better. Now I just wish they had a battle stats screen as well.

What does it exactly do?

It displays all the battles in the start of turn message box. If you want to watch them, click view; if you want to go to the location of the battle, click goto. If you don't want to watch any battles that turn (perhaps you only fought wildlife), then don't click any of them. If you want to bring up the message box after closing it, press m.

It's a thousand times better than having to view every single combat, and then not being able to re-visit battles that you want to consider in detail.

Huh, this is actually good? I wanted to like CoE3 but playing it was the pinnacle of "why does this exist".

It is good. I enjoyed CoE 2 a lot, was excited about 3 but found it to be a letdown, and right now I'm enjoying 4 a lot. It's a very streamlined experience but with a lot of content, interesting things to do, and just enough randomness to keep you on your toes.

 

[pakoito]

Just finished my first game (Troll King) and you're right, the AAR are way less invasive if you're just rolfstomping around, or if there's an interesting one you can replay it many times.

 

[Agesilaus]

Yeh, I looked it up because I was getting annoyed with having to skip the constant small-scale battles that occur when you play as a Druid. I was having 5+ meaningless battles every single turn.

 

[Agesilaus]

Great starting location for the AI. I found him a couple of years in, still stuck in his little tower.

Spoiler

Inferno has different tile sets, each with its own set of demons. I dug straight down twice and landed ontop of the wasteland; I was immediately next to a group of demon locusts. It seems that visiting inferno sounds an alarm, though, because everyone rushed me. After surviving the initial wave of responders, I moved north-east and found a location where the ice-tiles, magma-tiles, and wasteland-tiles all met. I was then frozen, burnt, and generally destroyed in every way imaginable.

My conclusion is that the pale ones have the potential to break the game if they feel they are losing. Summon a digging worm, dig down, dig down, and then laugh as the hordes of demons charge into Elysium.

Am I wrong in finding the Ulm summons uninspiring? They have some nice general units, but the summons are just so meh. I didn't get anything scary at all; only little worms, troglodytes, and mid-sized fire elementals.

Also, how do you guys explore Agartha? Randomly dig down? It takes so long to go through the walls that I can't imagine finding anything without a spending a significant amount of time with multiple diggers.

 

[Destroid]

Playing whack-a-mole with all the neutrals and shitty armies roving around is really annoying in this game.

 

[Agesilaus]

Playing whack-a-mole with all the neutrals and shitty armies roving around is really annoying in this game.

Yes, but there are some ways to alleviate the problem. Which faction are you playing as? With Druids, Senators, El, and a few others, you get free, dumb spawns that will wander around and clear the wildlife. Baron gets levies, the midgets get really cheap swarms of midgets, etc. With the --battlereports plan, you won't even need to view the battles unless you want to.

It also depends on the era and how the map was generated. My usual strategy is to have a home guard or two; a sort of cleanup crew that I can march out when I start losing stuff to the roaming packs. Just make sure the army can handle a moose or five, or else there might be some accidents.

 

[Agesilaus]

I'm not too impressed by a lot of the items in this game.

Although there are a few really good ones, like this:

Is it morally wrong to kill a merchant if this is the prize?

 

[Agesilaus]

Tried playing Senator for a change, it seems like a really powerful faction. The emperor is a joke character unless you take over the city, of course, but the faction gets a tonne of mercenary mages. The 50% income bonus doesn't hurt, either.

Spoiler

I managed to win, but it was a near run thing. 3 AI on Count, medium map Empire age.

I had the event where a crazy person builds a statue to Hades, and then the dead just start appearing everywhere. Funny thing was, I started 4 tiles from the capitol and the undead cleared it out for me. So I saved up 600 gold and walked right in; after declaring myself emperor, I just went crazy building statues. The statues have 200+ health and lvl 3 storm spells, so they're ridiculously powerful. I just camped out saving money until my emperor got married, and then they both underwent apotheosis.

2 Small tips:

First, you should equip all the slots before turning someone into a god. If they are wearing stuff, those slots will still exist as a god, otherwise I think you will just have 2 miscellaneous slots. I reached this conclusion because my emperor was wearing a robe when he ascended while my empress wasn't, so only the emperor wound up with a body slot.

Second, be sure you're done building statues before you ascend. Gods can't build statues for some reason.

Anyway, in the beginning I was pretty sure I was going to lose this match. The statues gave me a breather, though, and destroyed a lot of enemy units. It's not difficult to hold a city if you have a near-invincible lightning cannon on top of it. That ensured enough income for me to hire a tonne of mercenary mages and Leos.

Here's the final victory shot, ruined by nudist satyrs:

 

[Hobo Elf]

Why is this allowed? 1000 sacrifices to summon Ba'al, and this is what you get? He doesn't even have Special Powers so you can't use him to summon special Ba'al units so you need to level up another Priestess to do that shit again. Fuck this gayass faction.

 

[Haba]

I just don't get El.

Seraph, the most powerful summon El gets. Currently decking 300 kills, including Death.

End result? Seraph is dead.

So you break the seals, as the ultimate dick move.

Bottomless pit is opened up right next to your own frontline citadel.

In the end I tried to get the AI controlled angels to do the dirty work for me, as my own armies were utterly raped by disease demons.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Voice of El is just a butthurt faction. If you can't win you just open all the seals so that no one else can win ether.

One thing that disappoints me about CoE4 is how the water areas are still kinda useless. I think it's a wasted oportunity to have amphibious units but then do nothing with them. I wish there were some real resource nodes in the water. In CoE4 at last you can enter the water plane if you find it, if the entrance was generated during map gen (random chance), but that's about as interesting as it gets. I wish there was a need to control and own the seas.

 

[Agesilaus]

Why is this allowed? 1000 sacrifices to summon Ba'al, and this is what you get? He doesn't even have Special Powers so you can't use him to summon special Ba'al units so you need to level up another Priestess to do that shit again. Fuck this gayass faction.

A 212 hit point, 2 x lvl 3 caster is very powerful. That whole faction is really powerful, the lower level summons are great and pretty easy to afford.

If you really don't like Ba'al, upgrade to a different greater ritual. I only saw the second sun, which was also pretty strong (just don't keep your non-fireresistant troops with him).

 

[Hobo Elf]

Why is this allowed? 1000 sacrifices to summon Ba'al, and this is what you get? He doesn't even have Special Powers so you can't use him to summon special Ba'al units so you need to level up another Priestess to do that shit again. Fuck this gayass faction.

A 212 hit point, 2 x lvl 3 caster is very powerful. That whole faction is really powerful, the lower level summons are great and pretty easy to afford.

If you really don't like Ba'al, upgrade to a different greater ritual. I only saw the second sun, which was also pretty strong (just don't keep your non-fireresistant troops with him).

Those spells suck ass though, so it doesn't really matter how many times he can cast them. I've seen mid-tier demon commanders who are more useful than Ba'al. As an ultimate ritual this is absolute fail, especially for such an expensive ritual.

 

[Agesilaus]

Why is this allowed? 1000 sacrifices to summon Ba'al, and this is what you get? He doesn't even have Special Powers so you can't use him to summon special Ba'al units so you need to level up another Priestess to do that shit again. Fuck this gayass faction.

A 212 hit point, 2 x lvl 3 caster is very powerful. That whole faction is really powerful, the lower level summons are great and pretty easy to afford.

If you really don't like Ba'al, upgrade to a different greater ritual. I only saw the second sun, which was also pretty strong (just don't keep your non-fireresistant troops with him).

Those spells suck ass though, so it doesn't really matter how many times he can cast them. I've seen mid-tier demon commanders who are more useful than Ba'al. As an ultimate ritual this is absolute fail, especially for such an expensive ritual.

What mid tier demon has 200+ HP, double lvl3 combat casting, floating, MR 10, with a host of protective attributes like fear and ethereal? I've never played demonologist, so maybe that faction is amazing, but Ba'al looks like he could take an army by himself.

That said, spells are randomised, so maybe you will get better spells next time. Still, if he casts his 2 level three spells, he'll do up to 14 magic damage to the whole battlefield. That is going to completely wipe out almost every small humanoid, including casters.

I would just send him out on his own to find a library/cause havoc.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Why is this allowed? 1000 sacrifices to summon Ba'al, and this is what you get? He doesn't even have Special Powers so you can't use him to summon special Ba'al units so you need to level up another Priestess to do that shit again. Fuck this gayass faction.

A 212 hit point, 2 x lvl 3 caster is very powerful. That whole faction is really powerful, the lower level summons are great and pretty easy to afford.

If you really don't like Ba'al, upgrade to a different greater ritual. I only saw the second sun, which was also pretty strong (just don't keep your non-fireresistant troops with him).

Those spells suck ass though, so it doesn't really matter how many times he can cast them. I've seen mid-tier demon commanders who are more useful than Ba'al. As an ultimate ritual this is absolute fail, especially for such an expensive ritual.

What mid tier demon has 200+ HP, double lvl3 combat casting, floating, MR 10, with a host of protective attributes like fear and ethereal? I've never played demonologist, so maybe that faction is amazing, but Ba'al looks like he could take an army by himself.

That said, spells are randomised, so maybe you will get better spells next time. Still, if he casts his 2 level three spells, he'll do up to 14 magic damage to the whole battlefield. That is going to completely wipe out almost every small humanoid, including casters.

I would just send him out on his own to find a library/cause havoc.

I sent Ba'al alone as a test and he didn't perform all too well. Good for clearing hoburgs and goblins (who isn't?), but when a group of something slightly stronger comes along he'll get wrecked. This Ba'al barely managed to beat a mid sized army of Dwarfs + Dvala in their own fortress.
The Suns were far stronger and performed better. They are also immortal and if die will revive in a few turns. Hilariously, Ba'al can be banished, so for all his protectiveness, he has quite the achilles heel.

 

[Agesilaus]

I sent Ba'al alone as a test and he didn't perform all too well. Good for clearing hoburgs and goblins (who isn't?), but when a group of something slightly stronger comes along he'll get wrecked. This Ba'al barely managed to beat a mid sized army of Dwarfs + Dvala in their own fortress.
The Suns were far stronger and performed better. They are also immortal and if die will revive in a few turns. Hilariously, Ba'al can be banished, so for all his protectiveness, he has quite the achilles heel.

Welp, that's that, then. I have only summoned the second sun, which promptly incinerated my army because I didn't realise units took damage from walking with him. He was pretty awesome, though.

Does anyone know what's up with the name of the spell schools? It seems each faction has different names for the schools, so how do the +1 items work? If I have a +1 to necromancy item, does it work on the Bakemono "kuro do" school?

Trying Bakemono for the first time now.

 

[Hobo Elf]

You would think that the +1 items should work. Sub-schools like Pyromancy, Hydromancy etc. are just limited versions of Fire and Water magic, but should still get a bonus from it.

 

[Agesilaus]

They need to implement a Chinese and an Ancient Greek faction. Right now, my two favourite historic/mythological factions are missing.

 

[Agesilaus]

You would think that the +1 items should work. Sub-schools like Pyromancy, Hydromancy etc. are just limited versions of Fire and Water magic, but should still get a bonus from it.

Is there a list of what is a sub-school of what? I checked the manual but it just gives a description of each school without stating the hierarchy.

 

[pakoito]

Troll King falls to 3 Giant Mushrooms, free. I am disappoint.

 

[Hobo Elf]

You would think that the +1 items should work. Sub-schools like Pyromancy, Hydromancy etc. are just limited versions of Fire and Water magic, but should still get a bonus from it.

Is there a list of what is a sub-school of what? I checked the manual but it just gives a description of each school without stating the hierarchy.

I dunno if there's a list. I just kinda figure it out for myself based on what spells go under the sub-schools.

 

[Hobo Elf]

So I found this while wandering around Hades with my current Necro play. You know, I've been wondering about something for a while now. What if..

I use Planar Swap to return back to Elysium.

It's only mundane forests here, whereas in Hades the Prince of Death is stationed here. I move from my original spot, the green square, into the tile where the Prince of Death resides, in Hades.

After Planar Swapping back I emerge within the Citadel of Death! Managed to steal it for myself without having to go through the trouble of fighting the Prince of Death. But what happened to him?

Oh.. Well, he's your responsibility now, Elysium!