I’m doing a Middle Age game this time, as Marignon. This game is using a map designed with the aesthetic as a priority, so the balance can be comparatively wonky, but it should be fun. This game is using Dominions Enhanced, which I haven’t really played with before but while I wasn’t looking it seems to have become almost the default environment. I’m not totally a fan, it changes the paradigm too much compared to summod, which was dominant in Dominions 4 era, and sort of harkens back to the days of Dom3 where there was a whole separate meta for the major mod of the day that changed based on whims and personal interactions. Alas, so it goes. There’s some cool stuff in DE, and it even adds some interesting nations that represent parts of the world which aren’t well represented in the base game; that asymmetry as been a pet annoyance of mine for a few years, but I haven’t done (where done means completed) anything about it myself. I’m not engaging in anything related though, I considered the west African and Native American nations, but in the end I’m playing Europeans.
On Marignon, you almost always want fire and astral, because you get bonus paths to bless on them, and blood is a handy path as well for blessing. Since Baphomet gives you all three for pretty cheap, he’s a solid option. As for the specific blesses, this is a fairly early-game build. Twist Fate is better on low HP units – if they would die in one hit, like flagellants, it doubles their survivability. It’s not bad on the knights of the chalice either, but it’s not a big deal on angels, who would greatly prefer multiplicative survivability benefits over additive. Flaming Weapons, similarly, are solid on knights and flagellants, but rather redundant on the angels. Blood Surge, similarly, has stats that’ll be nice on anyone but better on troops, whose damage output cares more about the probability of success on attack rolls; big units should turn success into an inevitability if done right. The reinvigoration is great on anyone but there would have been cheaper ways to get it if that was the main point.
The scales are also early-game oriented even moreso, I’ve gone all in on production so I can blast out tons of knights and crossbows from my capital, ensuring decent production despite using an immobile pretender, but later in the game, I’ll wish I’d had a bit more order instead. Anyways, the beginning.
I’m on the second biggest island, which isn’t a bad place to be. I’ve got a connection through a cave to the biggest island, and have direct access (depicted as via zeppelin) to a small nearby island. I also have two more ordinary connections, although as far as game mechanics go, these are all ordinary. I’m also quite near a high peak, which due to my heat scales will thaw and become accessible shortly. All the high peaks in this game are connected to each other. It’s very experimental with province connection mechanics. There are 11 level 2 thrones, and 12 points needed to win, so just barely over half. A rush victory is possible, but unlikely with this number of players – unless we get several early dropouts.
From top to bottom:
• Sceleria, masters of necromancy, have death and nature on the pretender. Perhaps aiming for Tartarians? Or just a generic bless build. Going by the name, he may be intending to utilize a lot of disease and poison.
• Pythium has some Earth, which probably means fortitude for their hydras. They also have the title “the Hidden One”, which I don’t know the meaning of.
• I’m listed third, and my build was already discussed, but the name is a reference to the façade of the Fascist party headquarters in Rome. If you’re not familiar, it looked like this:
The face of the Baphomet reminds me of that face in the middle. My titles clearly reveal my three paths, by the way. I’m the enemy of darkness and the king of astral fires, both of which are F/S names, and the king of pain, which is blood.
• Anyway, the fourth on the list of pretenders is Caelum, who doesn’t have any path-based nickname that I recognize. Since his name is “Not An Awake Expander”, I suspect he’s an awake expander.
• Uruk has a lot of dominion – five titles! And he’s got fire, water, and air paths high. Maybe more, I kind of suspect it’s a high rainbow bless. In Dominions Enhanced, Uruk has decent summonable sacreds units in three different gem types and all in Conjuration, as well as plenty of sacred commanders of various types and sources, so this is a reasonable strategy. He’s either gonna have no scales or no expansion, though – I expect he’ll most likely have opted for the former, but that’s a general expectation, not based on anything I know about his build specifically.
• Nazca’s titles are all-in on blood. My first guess is blood vengeance Supayas, but they’ve got a lot of new summonable sacreds too.
• Seventh on the list is Phlegra, who looks like he has at least mid-tier nature and earth, so he’s probably got regeneration and fortitude to make his tyrants into SCs. After all, they’re the best recruitable units for that purpose in the game. My angels are better, if you count summons, but my bless isn’t built for them so they’ll be relying on gear and spells.
• Phaeacia has a lot of air magic and some decent scales.
• R’lyeh has earth, astral, and whatever “bane of men” means.
• Now we’re into the mod nations. Tartary is horse nomads, and they can’t build forts well – which means they’re encouraged to steal them. They also have almost no non-mounted units, and in this case they have a lot of death on their pretender.
• The last one on the list is Nihuala, which I think is just generally Native American, apart from being between generally not coastal, I don’t see enough specific detail to associate them with something specific. Anyway, they’ve got Nature and probably Death, and maybe some Fire.
So that’s who I’m up against. For the first turn, I’ll recruit a few more boys to help liberate my cap ring and start researching – level 2 evocation will make my mages a lot handier, relative to the investment, and then I’ll go into conjuration for battle saints, who are good out-of-the-box thugs. Then I’ll probably either go to construction or I’ll be responding to something specific. We’ll see. As for now, it’s only the beginning.
qt worms 