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Anime Dominions 4 Codex Noober PBEM
- Thread starter hoverdog
- Start date
I was beelining for Olm Conclave (a nice mage + several useful shooters in a package), only to notice, upon reaching Con4, that this spell needs to be cast in a fucking cave
Well, it's still better to spend all water gems on Living Mercury, since you play more or less standard E4N9 MA Agartha. The damn shit is nearly impossible to counter.
Johannes
Arcane
Sentinels are extremely overrated for some reason. They drain your mage turns to give you meat shields who still die when encountered with something hard-hitting and need numbers to make any difference.
Going conjuration is usually much better. You get Magma Children, Earth Elementals, and Penumbrals or Shard Wights which means you actually have some hitting capacity instead of totally 1-dimensional army that relies on enemies fatiguing out. Also gets you Earthpower, then you can go for Alteration or Evocation to get proper mileage of your mages in battle. Or Conj-5 for battle-summon E Elementals.
Going conjuration is usually much better. You get Magma Children, Earth Elementals, and Penumbrals or Shard Wights which means you actually have some hitting capacity instead of totally 1-dimensional army that relies on enemies fatiguing out. Also gets you Earthpower, then you can go for Alteration or Evocation to get proper mileage of your mages in battle. Or Conj-5 for battle-summon E Elementals.
What hitting capacity are you talking about? They are all worthless in melee combat. Summons from Ench school are much more offence-effective AND good shields too. Earth Power is only needed after you research some Alteration levels, otherwise it's not critically nesseccary (90% mages are busy summoning/researching, and battle mages can reinvigor themselves to some extent with E4 bless).
Sentinels are not overrated, they are just cost-effective. Still, LM is the main reason to rush Ench4, while keeping up Alt and Cons. Conj should come 4th in MA Agartha's priorities.
Johannes
Arcane
Rushing for a summon that you don't have the gems to cast is pure idiocy. Why do you speak with such conviction about things you don't know about, that kind of attitude gets in the way of learning. If you don't understand something you should ask, my previous post is still 100% correct.
So that's why you recommend starting with Conjuration? Ooook.
Johannes
Arcane
More like, that's why you don't rush for LM. It just rules out that goal as pointless. Though Conjuration-3 first is still mostly superior to anything else you could do, too.
Conj-3 gives you the ability to push all your gems into superb summons, without any sitesearching needed. And gives you a vital battlefield spell, though you can really only utilize it a moment later when you reach Earth Meld, for example. Compare to going Ench - when you reach ench-3 you could have 10 Sentinels compared to 5 E Elementals and 25 Magma Children... while spending more gems (and for worse units outside a double major bless - and even with a bless you can just use Shard Guards for a somewhat Sentinel-like unit, while the Conj summons give you new tools to play with). And you can cast Strength of Giants with a gem. Which one gives the more formidable rush? Then if you continue to Ench-4 with LMs in mind, you gotta sitesearch which slows your momentum massively. You still have no combat spells to speak of, when a guy who went conj-3 -> alt-2 can cast Earth Meld with Epower.
Only reason to go for Ench early is to rush Sentinels, and that's a trap option that sucks your design points and mage turns.
Conj-3 gives you the ability to push all your gems into superb summons, without any sitesearching needed. And gives you a vital battlefield spell, though you can really only utilize it a moment later when you reach Earth Meld, for example. Compare to going Ench - when you reach ench-3 you could have 10 Sentinels compared to 5 E Elementals and 25 Magma Children... while spending more gems (and for worse units outside a double major bless - and even with a bless you can just use Shard Guards for a somewhat Sentinel-like unit, while the Conj summons give you new tools to play with). And you can cast Strength of Giants with a gem. Which one gives the more formidable rush? Then if you continue to Ench-4 with LMs in mind, you gotta sitesearch which slows your momentum massively. You still have no combat spells to speak of, when a guy who went conj-3 -> alt-2 can cast Earth Meld with Epower.
Only reason to go for Ench early is to rush Sentinels, and that's a trap option that sucks your design points and mage turns.
Ok, I see your point. I would rather send my mages search for gems than waste turns and gems on Magma Children and Elementals, but everybody plays the game however he wants.
... And 10 Sentinels are still better than 25 M.Children and 5 Elementals, if you play at least E4N9, not mentioning E9N9.
Johannes
Arcane
Absolutely not. You don't know what you're talking about. Sentinels may be better if someone sends low-strength units to fight deep in your dominion... But how likely is that.
Magma Children and Elementals are fantastic summons, and compliment your recruitables much better than meatshield sentinels - you already have meatshields but no damage dealers. Have you actually ever tried them?
Magma children are chaff, unless it's a Heat 3 scale. A bad, expensive chaff.
Stats under Cold2
EE are good and all, I get it. Trample+Enc0+Size4+Regen10% - all's great and cool. I use them myself sometimes when playing other nations, with bloodstione+summon EE combat spell.
I just fail to see why would one spend earth gems on EE, prefering them to Sentinels. Maybe later on, just for diversification's sake, or if you're fighting Ulm and his anti-sacred halberds. Situational. They are better dmg dealers than sentinels in cases when enemy can be trampled, so what? EE will never be a major dmg-dealing factor of MA Agartha anyway.
And yes, I tried EE, not Magma Children. I can hardly imagine a situation when Magma Children would be useful.
Edit: Almost forgot.
Are you talking about Shard Guards? They are capital-only, which makes them less valuable as the game progresses.
Johannes
Arcane
It's simple enough to not make Elementals when facing giants, that should be obvious. And remember the EEs benefit from the Golem Cult dominion. Magma Children kill everything without fire resist pretty much, it almost sounds like you wouldn't know their attack is an AoE or something.
If not these two, do tell what will be the major damage-dealing factor in an MA Agartha army during the second year? Shard Guards with their 2 att-11 attacks per square?
If not these two, do tell what will be the major damage-dealing factor in an MA Agartha army during the second year? Shard Guards with their 2 att-11 attacks per square?
Well, a lot of nations use size4 thugs, be it recruitable or summoned commanders. Not just Jotunheim/Ashdod. Flying units cannot be trampled as well.
Yes. Same as Sentinels.
You mean PD or other chaff? You can't possibly outnumber any other type of chaff with magma children. So, they are meat killing other meat until getting 1-2 hits and then instadeath. The difference is in quantity and cost, Magma Children are not looking pretty on that front. Not to mention how one-sided and easy to counter they are. Why do we even discuss them?
As if you don't know that meatshields win battles easily without dealing any damage whatsoever. But at the start of second year - YES, it's Shard Guards + Earth Meld (they are immune to it). Just don't start "what if you face flying enemy" or any kind of "how do you counter that or this" conversation. When Shard Guards + Earth Meld isn't effective, I'll think of something situational.
Norfleet
Moderator
- Joined
- Jun 3, 2005
- Messages
- 12,250
This is underwater? Because I'm not sure what a shard guard is or why it's impressive, at least from my Dom2 background, other than the part where you got wiped and none of them died, but I didn't see anything that I recognized as impressive, again, from my Dom2 background. I can see why it might be kind of a pain, though. Fighting hordes underwater is a bit more cumbersome because you can't simply nuke 'em. What's impressive about Shard Guards? Are they immune to lightning? Fire?
It's hard to explain in short. If you ever get your hands on Dom4, just try to play Oceania, you won't have any questions after that
Shard Guards are cool. Not like super-omg-op type of cool, but decent nevertheless. Dawg was smart enough to combine them with Earth Meld, too - a perfect early-rush combitation vs most of MA nations. Hard to counter. Impossible to counter while playing Oceania.But frankly speaking,
He could easily pwn me with much, MUCH less effort. He attacked my capital with 80+ Shard Guards, which was absolutely, insanely unnesseccary. He could pwn all my castles with smth like 30-40. Unless he plans to attack Vanheim capital immidiately after that - ok then, fair enough.
And I kinda screwed up with surface expansion, too. Not that it would make any difference in the end.
Edit: Just to avoid misunderstanding: Oceania doesn't really care about Earth Meld - I mean, this combination is perfect vs standard situations.
Oceania can't counter E4N9 Shard Guards during early game, that's what I meant. No smart tactics or spell support needed, just send a medium-sized doomstack with a priest-commander underwater and watch them rock.
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Johannes
Arcane
Bullshit. How do you expect anyone to take you seriously when you pull stuff like this from your ass?
Chaff, elites, whatever gets thwrown at you dies fast against them. They die too but they cost almost nothing. They'd eat up your beloved Sentinels for cost, that's for sure.
As if you don't know that meatshields win battles easily without dealing any damage whatsoever. [/QUOTE]
Against toothless armies run by shitty players yes. But Shard Guards are no Anakites. They'll very easily die to equal gold cost of basic glaive wielding infantry or such.
You should just ask yourself - are you actually good enough at this game to be making such confident statements, or are you someone who messes around with Sirens without testing them at all?
I'm the one who's tired arguing with bitchin' theory-spammers like you. Why don't you find someone who actually cares about your opinion?
Johannes
Arcane
You're free to play as badly as you like, sure. Suit yourself newfags.
Dayyālu
Arcane
You're free to play as badly as you like, sure. Suit yourself newfags.
Your position is correct. I ran some tests and Magma Children are pretty good for their cost. There are at least half a dozen counters that will crush them by the dozen, but if sent against a gem-equivalent number of Sentinels (or even in a 2 Magma Childrens vs 1 N9E4 Sentinel with positive Dominion situation) Children will win every time. Also, this means very little, as such direct confrontations would be very rare and counters are everywhere - I just could say that despite being low prot units Magma Children are quite good thanks to Aura and AoE attack. Test them: they die like flies, but they kill. They are a Cap Only summon however, and so we can start blabbering about strategical considerations and whatever. No theory survives impact with the foe.
THAT SAID, this is a noob game. Endless theorycrafting is excellent or not, but again I suggest we start a new thread if everyone is so inclined. Again, if everyone wants to show how good/bad he is, we are organizing a new Disciple game for the next year. Everyone can join and show us your pretty skills and cool ideas, so we can all rejoice in dying, winning and whatever.
CrimsonAngel
Prophet
- Joined
- Oct 2, 2007
- Messages
- 2,258
Lets get back to what is important. ULM IS BEST!!!
CrimsonAngel
Prophet
- Joined
- Oct 2, 2007
- Messages
- 2,258
I do not like the forces geting close to my borders,
hoverdog
dog that is hovering, Wastelands Interactive
hoverdog
dog that is hovering, Wastelands Interactive
got too bold and careless.
CrimsonAngel
Prophet
- Joined
- Oct 2, 2007
- Messages
- 2,258
Still cost me a lot, but at least it was my cursed army and not my new and improved main army. If i where you i would run.
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