Just Me and My Pretty Birds (A N00b Dominions 4 MP AAR)

[sbr]

This is an AAR I am writing for another forum, but I figure there could be interest here as well and I might as well get as much out of my effort as possible.

I will try and keep to many inside jokes and nonsensical things out of this one, but it will mostly just be a straight copy/paste so I apologize in advance.

I am currently just starting my very first Dominions 4 MP game, and I am hoping to track my progress, thoughts, ideas and painful failures here in this AAR.  The game is hosted/organized on the Paradox OT forum; there is a good sized and experienced Dominions community over there.  As I have never played MP, and have barely scratched the surface in single player, the other players in this game are much, much more experienced than me, I am sure that I am the most inexperienced player by quite a bit.  I am just hoping to get some noob-pity and to last long enough to learn something here. 

This is a 15 player game on the Hexinfinita Less Seas Map; it has 226 land provinces and 44 sea provinces.  The winner will be the first to control 5 Capital Provinces; though if your Dominion is ever the only one on the map you automatically win.  There are 3 different ages that a game can take place in and we are playing in the Late Age.



Dominions 4 is a turn-based strategy game based in a fantasy world.  I don't know details about the Lore, but the Old God has died and 15 Pretender Gods have risen up and are vying to become the new God.  There are ~75 nations to play (~25 for each Age) each with its own unique units and abilities.  The spell book has over 850 individual spells and there are over 350 different magical items than can be forged/found.

I will be playing as Caelum; it is a race of mountain dwelling Bird Men.  They are lightly armored, but have very good mobility due to their ability to fly and have very skilled archers.  They are very skilled in Air Magic, can use Death and Earth Magic, and some ability in Water Magic.



I still don't have a coherent strategy for the game, but it is pretty hard to envision a mid to late game plan against other humans when you have barely got out of the early game against predictable AI opponents.  Based on the inherent abilities of Caelum I know I need to find a way to make my superior mobility work for me; I won't win even up toe-to-toe fights.  I need to find a way to fight on my terms when and where I want to.  I also have the ability to summon some decent meatshields (well they are mostly undead so I don't know how much meat they have) for my very good Archers and Mages so I will need to focus on this as well.

[sbr]

Pretender Creation

The first step in the game is to create your Pretender God.  The problem is, in order to create an effective Pretender you have to have an idea of what your game wide strategy will be.  It is pretty tough to know what your mid to end game strategy will be before the games starts, especially when you don't even know what the mid to late game consists of.

Your Pretender can have many different roles, depending on your strategy and what your nation needs.  Your Pretender can be an immobile Statue that spreads Dominion, researches magical technologies and casts Ritual spells, or it can be a God of War on the frontlines with your troops laying waste to the Heretical enemy; or somewhere in between.


This is the Pretender Creation Screen



You get 350 points to create your Pretender.  You select your Physical Form (Chassis); your Magic ability in the 8 Magic Paths (Fire, Air, Water Earth, Astral, Death, Nature, Blood)(and their corresponding Blessings)); your maximum Dominion (which is your religious power); and your Dominion Scales which affect the provinces are under the influence of your Dominion; and lastly when your Pretender will appear in the game.

Once you have an idea of your general strategy and what your Pretender build will look like your Chassis selection should be a pretty easy choice.  You have choices from inanimate and immobile statues and fountains to Dragons to humanoid Wizards to frail old Crones.  Each Chassis has its own innate magic ability; maximum Dominion; size, strength and combat power; and other special abilities.

These are the Chassis available for Late Age Caelum:



After studying my unit rooster I have decided that my Pretender will be combat focused (or an SC – Super Combatant).  My units are just too squishy, and even though I have some good mages they are physically weak and have little protection.

I didn't want to spread my research focus too wide so I wanted my Pretender to focus on Air (defense and electrical/lightning damage) Magic for combat spells, though the way the Magic Research works I might have been able to go with points in Fire.  Each Nation has nation specific Summoning Rituals and Caelum's need high level Spectral Magic (level 5 of 9); I don't have any recruitable mages with Astral Magic so my Pretender is my only choice to get those spells.  I don't know if my National Summons are worth the cost but I figure I might as well give it a shot; or at least give myself the opportunity to give it a shot.

Based on my rough plan this Chassis was the best choice.  The HP are on the lower end of the SC chassis, but Air Magic and forged equipment will make up for that.  This chassis can Fly and has shock resistance which are both important for a Caelum Pretender.




Access to higher level spells is not the only reason to put Pretender points into specific magic paths.  Every Nation has Sacred Units, and those Units can be Blessed in battle with a spell cast by a Priest.  Every Sacred unit get +1 morale when Blessed, but points into Magic paths on the Pretender can add additional bonuses to the Blessing.  4 points into a path gives a minor Blessing, and 9 points gives a major blessing.

My Sacred units aren't good enough to go out of my way to find a Blessing for them, but it can guide what I do.  A minor Blessing in Air gives all Blessed Sacred troops +2 Precision which makes spell casting much more accurate.  A minor Earth Blessing gives +2 Reinvigoration which reduces fatigue and lets the Sacred units fight longer and cast more spells in each battle.  The Astral Blessing of +2 Magic Resistance is not something I would have gone out of my way to get, but I will take it as an incidental to what else I wanted.

The next part is your Maximum Dominion.  As a general rule you want/need at least 7 Dominion on your Pretender in an MP game, higher is better.  Your max Dominion is a measure of how far and fast your Dominion can spread, and a defense against other Dominions spreading into your territories.  Each additional step costs

The Dominion Scales affect all provinces that are under the influence of your Dominion, and are basically sliders, with a range of +3/-3 (each positive move costs 40 points, each negative moves gives 40 points back)

Order/Turmoil:  High Order gives you Income boost, Unrest reduction and reduced random events.

Productivity/Sloth:  High Productivity gives you increased Income and Resources.

Heat/Cold:  Outside of a national preference either way on this reduces Income, Resources and Supplies.  Caelem prefers Cold 1.

Growth/Death:  Positive Growth gives you increased Income, Supply and Population growth (which turns into extra tax Income).

Luck/Misfortune:  Either way increases the number of random events but the direction determines how good or bad those events are.

Magic/Drain:  This affects your Magical research rate.

Each Scale setting has an effect on the random events you will get during the game; positive Luck and Magic are supposed to give you increased chances of getting random magic items.

Lastly you can decide when your Pretender will appear in the game; obviously the longer you wait the more points you get to spend on creation.  Your Pretender can be Awake and appear right at game start (no points); Dormant and appear after about 12 months (+150 points); or Imprisoned and will be released in about 3 years (+250 points).  I get the feeling Dormant is the sweet spot unless you have a special plan that lets you wait, or need the extra points.

This is my Pretender for this game:





I got the minor Air, Earth and Astral blessing (+2 precision, +2 Invigoration, +2 Magic Resistance), the Earth Blessing is the only one I went out of my way for, the others were just incidental.

I have Maximum Dominion of 8.

I went with Order 3 for the extra Income

I went with Cold 2.  I lost some income and supplies, but not much and I wanted the extra points.

I went with Luck 2 for the extra random events.  I would have gone with Luck 3 if I could have afforded it.  I considered going Cold 3 to get there but decided not too.

[sbr]

This is getting a little long but I might as well explain stiff while I wait.  The first few turns take a few seconds each and there is up to a 24 hour wait in between.  Yay PBEM!!

The game has started, here is my starting area:



The first thing I noticed was the mountain range to my north, with the orange crayon like line across the top.  Land based nations will not be able to cross those mountains to reach me but my flying units can cross the mountains.  It will be hard to take those provinces, because even though my units can cross the mountains I won't be able to trace supply over them; it could make for some interesting possibilities though depending on who ends up hold those provinces. I will have to see if any other nations have flying units, but I seem to have at least a partially secure flank.

The province directly to my east, green with the white lines, is a farmland province which gives increased Income but reduced Resources which suits me OK.

I ended up closer to the water than I wanted to.  It will be hard enough to figure out where the threats are and how to deal with them without having to deal with aquatic/amphibious armies popping up out of the water.

Overall my starting position seems decent though it really depends on where the other human players end up.

You can't see any enemy units in any of the adjacent provinces, but they are there.  You can always see units in provinces adjacent to ones you own but for some reason they don't appear until Turn 2.

Now about the rest of the screen.  The top left box should mostly be self explanatory, the province name and (province id) at the top.  The only other thing that may not be obvious is the Defense 25+/-; this is the provincial defense value.  You can spend gold to increase your defense which will help reduce unrest and at higher levels gives automatic patrolling which can help find enemy scouts/spies.  Provincial defense will fight enemy troops but I don't think depending on it for that is a very good idea.  If the Provincial Defense that is there for another reason happens to fight off an enemy that is more a bonus than an intended plan.

On the bottom line the white candle shows that the Dominion of my Pretender God is influencing this province, and the province to my south west.  You can also see the Dominion Scales kicking in here.  Dominion is completely separate from military control of a province.  Dominion is spread passively by your Pretender God, his/her Prophet and Temples.  This spread can push other weaker Dominions out of provinces.  Priests can also Preach in owned Provinces but this will only slightly increase the Dominion in that province there is no spread to other provinces from Preaching.  There can only be one Dominion in each province; white candles are your Dominion and black candles are an enemy Dominion.

I set my Pretender's max Dominion to 8 when I created him, so I can have up to 8 white candles in my provinces, so the one candle is pretty weak but it will ramp up pretty quick at least here at home.  I am getting the full effect of my Scales here in my home province, but those effects have to ramp up as well, you don't get the full benefit right as you move your Dominion into a province.

The top right box shows the name of my Pretender God and the green branch icon on the right is showing the season, early Spring.  The bottom row shows my inventory of Magical Gems, these are used to cast powerful spells and to forge Magical Equipment.  I start with a small income in Air, Water, Earth and Death Gems.

The left side of the screen shows the units present in the province.  Parshanta is a Storm General and my only starting military leader. 



Storm Generals have decent armor, especially in Cold provinces which give a bonus to the Ice Armor, but don't have enough HP to trust too much in melee combat.  The icons below his stats show that he is Resistant to Shock, Resistant to Cold, can Fly, and is getting the Armor bonus for being in a Cold province.

The next unit, Zephyron, is a Scout.  He can move with Stealth and sneak around the map.  Scouts can see what is in the province they are in, but not adjacent provinces.  You also get better and more accurate information about the units in a province if you have a Scout there.



His icons are similar to the Storm General other than the brown robe which means that he is Stealthy.

The right side shows the Buildings and Special Sites in the province.  The Lab doesn't have a pop up with information, but you need a Lab to recruit Mages and to perform Magical Research.

The Citadel is the Fort in the province.  One of the biggest keys to having a Fort in a province is that it pulls a portion of the Resources from all surrounding provinces, giving you a much bigger resource pool to build units with.



Temple:



The last 2 are Magical Sites that produce my Gems.  Each Nation has specific starting Magical Sites so these will always be in the Home province for Late Age Caelum.

[sbr]

Turn 1

I think the standard starting move is to make your initial leader a Prophet of your Pretender God.  I will do so with Parshanta.   Making a unit a Prophet makes them a Level 3 Priest (unless they already are, then they get bonus levels) and turns the unit into a Sacred Unit.  As I said during Pretender creation Sacred Units can be Blessed in battle, and Priest can the Blessing spell so Parshanta will be able to Bless himself.



I really want the Farmland province to my east so I will move my Scout over there to see what sort of enemies are defending it.  Hopefully it will be something I can deal with quickly.



Now it is time to Recruit new units.

Here are the units available in my Capital province:



Every unit costs gold and resources to recruit.  Your hold treasury is global, you can use it to recruit units in any and all provinces and in general the stronger a unit is the more it costs in gold.

The resource pool is specific for each province though, outside of a Fort's ability to pull resources from other provinces.  However it replenishes every turn.  Again in general heavily armored units cost more in resources.  This is why I am more concerned with gold than resources with this particular nation.

You can only recruit one Commander per turn per province, and that is where your Mages and other powerful units are, so you really have to manage that carefully.

Left to Right I have:

Caelian Scout
Storm General
Raven Lord:  another Stealthy unit.  Not as Stealthy as the Scout but better in combat.
Harab Seraph: a Mage with low level Air and Death magic (A1D1) along with a third point randomly assigned in Air, Water, Earth or Death magic.
Iron Crafter:  a weak Earth Mage (E1) but he has the Forge Bonus which makes it cheaper to forge magical Equipment.  His limited magic ability is making it hard for me to find a use for him, even though I feel like I need to.
Caretaker:  Earth and Death magic (E1D1) and my cheapest and easiest to recruit Preist
Caelian Seraph:  Similar to the Harab Seraph but no random Magic Path.  Decent Air and weak Water Magic (A2W1)
Harab Seraph:  My strongest but most expensive Mage.  The Harab Seraphs are Slow to Recruit, which means it takes two turns to recruit. 

The Caelian Seraph and the Harab Elder can only be recruited in this, my Home province so I will be focusing on them almost exclusively until I get another Fort and Lab built.

This turn I am going to recruit a Caelian Seraph.  He cost 125 gold and 2 Resources.



You can see his Magic Path levels (A2W1), the number of Reseach Points he contributes each turn he is Researching and some other now familiar icons (Cold Resistant, Fly, etc)

The Units in the lower section are your main fighting forces, but they cannot move on their own, they have to be in a squad led by a Commander.  I will go into detail on them as I recruit them.  All of the units can Fly, except the last 2 the Mammoth and the Earthbound.  I know that I have to use Mammoths in this game because Mammoths are awesome, so I need to way to make them viable, and I am pretty sure that if it works it is going to involve shuttling Mammoths around the world on Flying Carpets.

For know I will recruit 1 new Spire Horn Archer:



Precison is the most important attribute for Archers, and every point over 10 counts double so my standard 12 Precision Archers are very good.

And I will also recruit 6 Raptorian Warriors.  The Raptor units (orange wings) are not Cold and Shock Resistant like the Caelian units, but they will be the core of my early army.  Thankfully they are relatively cheap because they will die a lot, even to the Independent mobs in early game expansion.



Here is the final Recruiting Tally for Turn 1.



Not too bad, I spent half of my starting gold and used all of the Resources available this turn, which is good since they are lost if not used.

Now that all of my Units have acted and I have Recruited new units in all of my provinces (1), it is time to end my turn and wait for everyone else.

[sbr]

Turn 2

The first thing we see is the start of turn messages:



It appears as I was right, creating a Prophet is the standard first move.  12 of the 15 nations did so.

Start of Turn 2



We can now see the Independent forces in the border provinces, though we don't get completely accurate information.  We get an idea of the number and types of units in other provinces.  The farmland province I wanted, Zoglia, has 40 units that consist of mostly Heavy Infantry so I will wait on that one while I build up my army.  The province directly west, while not all that exciting looks like something I can take this turn; there are about 20 units of Militia and their Commander.



Here is the Army Management Screen for my Home province:



Parshanta started off with 15 Spire Horn Archers and 10 Raptorian Warriors; you can see the 1 Archer and 6 Warriors I recruited last turn along the top in the Garrison.  You can also see Nabunaiti, the Caelian Seraph in the list of Leaders.

Every leader has a number of units that can lead (80 for Parshanta) which is a hard limit based on their Leadership skill; that skill can increase as the Leader gains Experience.  The number of squads (3 for Parshanta) is a soft limit; every unit under the Leader will lose moral if a Leader has more squads then allowed, but it is possible.

A couple of clicks adds the new units to their proper squads, and then it is time to get the Army's orders ready for the fight against the Militia in Zoglia.  Each Leader and each squad can be assigned their own orders to carry out during the battle, these orders will need to be fine tuned for each battle. 

First the Archers.



The Archers will be set to Fire and Keep Distance, which pretty much explains what they will do.  Then we select the general target:


I am not expecting to meet any enemy archers, cavalry or monsters so the Archers will just target whatever is closest.

The process is the same for the Raptor Warriors, though they get a target choice that the Archers did not get:



I am only expecting Militia and their Commander(s) in this enemy province, and all units will break and route if their Commander dies or routes, so I am going to use my mobility to have my Warriors attack the enemy Commander in the rear and hope to finish the fight without having to engage with the Militia at all. 

Commanders are scripted a bit differently, you can give them basic standing orders (cast spells, attack, stay behind) but you can also individually script the first 5 actions the Leader will take during the battle.



Storm Generals do not normally have any Magic ability, but Parshanta is the Prophet and has the ability to cast Holy/Divine Spells.



First the Prophet will cast Sermon of Courage increasing everyone's morale.



Next he will cast Blessing, he is the only Sacred unit on the field but he will get the Morale, Precision, Invigoration, and Magic Resistance bonuses for a Blessed Sacred.

His next 3 actions will be to cast Smite upon the enemy.




Here is Parshanta's script for the upcoming battle




The squads also need to be properly positioned on the battlefield, at the start everyone is just piled up in the center of the field.



I will move the Raptors to the front line, and leave the Archers in the back center.  Parshanta will move up between the two squads. 

The size of the square representing the squads will grow as the squad grows in power.



You can also see the Seraph (small blue square) in the center with the Archers since he is in this province but he will not be involved in this battle. 



With the level of Research I have, the only spells the Seraph can cast are an Air Shield to protect him from incoming missile fire, or a freezing attack that has to happen in melee range.  With no armor at all the Seraph will never willingly get into melee range so he brings no utility to this battle, he will stay home and hit the books in the Lab.



All Magic Spells require a minimum  ability from the caster, but also a certain level of research in the corresponding School.

Evocation is the School where most of the damage dealing spells are so I will be pushing to Evocation 2 as quickly as possible so I can start dealing out some sweet, sweet lightning damage to my enemies.

Now to recruiting.  I will recruit a Harab Elder this turn (and next).



He costs 305 gold (more than double the Seraph), and takes 2 turns to recruit.  The gold all comes out this turn, while the Resource cost is split between the two turns.  We get A2E1D2 magic as a base, but he also gets some random magic.



So he is guaranteed another level in either Air, Water, Earth, or Death and has a 10% chance to get another level in one of the same 4Magic Paths.  Those 10% guys are what makes recruiting these worthwhile.

I also grab another Spire Horn Archer and 6 more Raptor Warriors like last turn.

[The Brain]

Always accompanied by an owl is she?

[sbr]

Hoo?

[sbr]

Turn 3



The Nation of Jomon has named a Prophet, and we had a battle.  Checking the battle report:



Nice, wiped them out with no losses.  The fewer losses that the Armies take the faster I can expand against the Independents.  Every turn I have to send my 1 General back to Caelum to reinforce the Army is one turn I am not expanding against the Independents while the other humans are.  This is a very small map for the number of players we have and the AI controlled provinces are going to go quick, I need to get my fair share before others do.

Watching the battle is a touch disappointing, even though it was a wipe out.  The Raptor Warriors didn't go to the rearmost units, they flew to attack the Militia which were out in front.



Here you see the 8 Militia surrounded by my Raptor Warriors; the 2 heavy Infantry are just below them and the Archers, Priest and Commanders are further back.  I am thinking I may need to wait a pulse or two before trying to attack the rear next time, at least things worked out this time.  Once the Militia were dealt with the heavy Infantry went quickly and then the back line units were swamped and overrun.

There were no deaths, but one of the Warriors was wounded twice:



The loss of the arm will really hurt as he can no longer carry his shield.  I don't think I have any way to heal these afflictions so I will just keep him in the line until he dies or I need room in a squad, then we can be moved to a geriatric squad on a back line Commander.

Parshanta's Leadership was so valuable during the battle that he earned a Heroic Ability, the red icon on the far right.



You can also see the Icons that show that he is Level 3 Priest, Sacred, and the glowy sword thing that represents a Prophet.



Nice, extra protection for the Prophet is a good thing.  I don't know what happens if he dies, other than having to make someone else a Prophet which wastes a turn.

Now, here is the neighborhood at the start of Turn 3



You can see the newly occupied province with the Caelum banner flying and the crossed swords icon showing a recent battle, and the Independent units in the 3 new adjacent provinces.

My Dominion is also slowly starting to spread as you can see the white candles starting to appear on the map.  You can also see at least one province in the ocean with black candles, enemy Dominion.  Here is a quick shot of the 5 land  provinces that are influenced by my Dominion so you can see how the Dominion Scales gradually build up with the Dominion power.












Now to focus on the newly conquered province of Zoglia.


 
There is some unrest which will lower tax income until it is dealt with, to do that I will increase the Provincial Defense.



Each level of Provincial Defense costs that amount in gold:  Level 1 = 1g; Level 10 = 10g.  I will raise the Defense of Zoglia to 10, which is the lowest that will reduce Unrest, and that will cost a total of 55 gold.



Occasionally, depending on terrain, provinces will have new and interesting units to recruit.  Zoglia is not one of those provinces.



For Commanders there is a Scout, a Commander, and a Priest but I need to build a Temple here before I can recruit the Priest and that won't be happening so it is irrelevant.  I am going to recruit one of the generic Commanders, they aren't the best but they work to help ferry units around the map and to fight in a pinch.



The regular units aren't too exciting either, with a Militia, Archer and Heavy Infantry.  The Archers in this province while not interesting are pretty good.  I didn't get a screenshot, but while their Precision isn't as high as my Birdmen they are more heavily armored and better in melee combat than my melee units and very similar to the Heavy Infantry in the same province.  I will recruit on of these archers as well, which brings up another point.  You cannot over spend in gold while recruiting, it is a hard limit but you can overspend on Resources.  The unit will sit in the queue while the provincial resource budget resets each turn, and then the unit will be built.



The Archer unit is faded out meaning it won't be built until more Resources are gathered into the province.

The capture of Zoglia has increased the National Income and the Resource base for the fort in Caelum.  I will have to go back and look at the math again, but with the conquest of Zolgia I get an additional 31 Resource to spend in Caelum, which is odd since Zolgia only produces 27 itself.



I am still waiting on the Harab Elder from last turn to finish, so no new Commander here this turn.  I will continue to recruit the Raptorian Warriors but there will be 2 new additions.  Blizzard Warriors are the next step up in Archers over the Spire Horn Archers, and Raptors are the lightly armored relatives of the Raptorian Warriors.  I will throw a couple of those in just to use every Resource available to me.





This turn I am going to attack the next province to the west, Herghendorf.  It is a farmland province so pretty valuable.  I was originally resistant to attack here, thinking I might run into another player's army but this map is too small to be overly cautious.



I will be sending the same units led by Parshanta, but with some minor changes in tactics.  The Leader and the Archers will follow the same scripts as before, but the Raptor Warriors will hold in place for two pulses, then attack the closest enemy units.



The Caelian Serpah is continuing his Magic Research and the Scout will continue due east to try and make contact with another human player over there.

[Syt]

Thanks for the AAR. It's one of those games I like in concept, but never really got into.

[sbr]

Oh, someone is following.  OK another update.

Turn 4



The slowpokes in Jomon have finally named a Prophet to their false god Nobukazu, and we had our battle in Herghendorf, in which we were victorious.



But just barely victorious, and a costly victory at that.  The scouting department is going  to get a stern talking to, as there were almost double the number of enemy units in that province than we expected.

After watching the replay of the battle, it was even closer than it looks on the battle report.  My units didn't actually kill many of the enemy soldiers, they just caused them to route and break.  Each individual soldier has a morale score, but the important thing in combat is the Squad Morale score, which is an average of the morale scores of all of the members of that squad.  Squads will have to make a morale check if they take "heavy losses", hit with Magical Fear attacks or are fighting horrible creatures.

The Raptor Warriors waited for the enemy to close the distance while the Spire Horn Archers rained arrows down.  The enemy Militia were the first to engage the Raptors and were quickly routed, but at the loss of 2 Warriors.  At that point the Raptorian Warriors lost focus, some continued to pick off fleeing Militia while the others engaged the Heavy Infantry; the lightly armored bird men were no match for the heavy enemy and since they had split up they ended fighting with even numbers and started to get cut to pieces.  I'm still not sure exactly what happened, but just as things were looking bleak 2 of the 3 Enemy Commanders and the Enemy Priest routed.  Just a second later the 6 remaining Raptors routed and fled the field as well.  The last Commander, along with 4 Heavy Infantry and 10+ Light Infantry began to close on the Archers, but after just a few steps and a volley of arrows and Magical Smitings the remaining enemy routed and retreated.

When squads route, the surviving units retreat to other owned provinces where they need to be recollected by a Commander to rejoin the army.  It worked out well for me that they only had one province to retreat to and I just happened to have a Commander I recruited last turn just sitting around there with nothing to do.   He also happens to be just one turn move from the Capital. 



There would normally be a lot of wasted time running around and herding all of the survivors together, and in moving back to the Capital to reinforce my army but all of my units are only 1 turn of travel from the Capital province and they all headed there to regroup.

Here is the map at the start of Turn 4



A few interesting things here, the first is units from another human nation.  Second, my Harab Elder finished recruiting (portrait at the left) and it turns out he is one of the Elite, one of the ten-percenters.  He got a random point in Air and in Earth making him A3E2D2.  Very nice.  Also you can see my original Caelian Scout 3 provinces to the east, the small gray triangle with the eye on it.

The biggest news is the contact with another nation, Mictlan.  I don't want to fight any other human controlled nations at this point and the False God of Mictlan, Snakes-on-a-head sent a messenger (PM on the forums) offering to set a peaceful border.  It is the border I was hoping for so I accepted.  The pink line is the new border between Caelum and Mictlan.

 

Now that that border is set I will need to start expanding as fast as I can to the east before I meet a human nation over there.  I do have my scout heading that way and he will be next to another Capital next turn.



The Temple you can see on the far left is my Capital province, and the crown in the province to the north east is another Capital so you can see how tight this map will be.

The province I just captured Herghendorf:



The enemy dominion is this province is not very friendly to me, especially the Heat instead of my preferred Cold.  The income is nice and will get better as I remove unrest; I will buy Provincial Defense up to level 10 again here to help with that.

No Archers to recruit here, just the same units I fought to gain control.  I will start recruiting some heavy Infantry here and in Zoglia to build up a border defense force.  I don't want my weak and mobile units holding a border, I want them sitting safe at home and ready to fly out and strike anywhere. 

I will recruit a Scout in both of my new provinces, you can't have too much info on the enemy.



The capture of Herghendorf didn't do much to boost Resource production in the Capital, but it did give a nice Income boost.



I will recruit another Caelian Seraph and rebuild the army with more Raptorian Warriors and Spire Horn Archers.  I usually build Blizzard Warriors as my Archers, but I noticed the only difference in the units is defensive, and if I have to rely on the defensive ability of my Archers I am screwed anyway and the Spire horn Archers are 40% cheaper in Resources.

I haven't dug into the brass tacks of the combat system very deeply yet, but there are 2 defensive values that matter.  The first, Defence Skill is a measure of how hard something is to hit.  The second, Protection is strength of the units armor.  Most armors decrease the units Defence Skill score, I assume the theory is that wearing heavy and bulky armor makes you easier to hit, even if that hit doesn't hurt.

The Spire Horn Archers have Defense 9 and Protection 6.  The Blizzard Warriors have an 8 for both. 

Here is my final recruiting screen for the Capital



My combat Commanders are headed home to reinforce, and my Scout is headed east to make contact with another human nation.  That leaves the Mages.  The Seraph will continue to Research in the Lab, the Harab Elder will eventually join him but he has other business to attend to first.  Here is the list of actions he can take



Ritual Spells are powerful spells that have to be cast from a Lab and take an entire month (turn) to cast.

I will be Forging Items soon, but not yet.

Alchemy is changing Magical gems from one type to another.  It is obviously not very efficient, but a nice option.

Empowerment uses Magical Gems to increase the Magic Path level of a Mage.  You can add an entirely new Path or just add to en existing one.  Again it is very inefficient, but many times the only way a nation can get access to a Magical Path.

I won't be using any Blood Magic this game so Hunt Blood Slaves is irrelevant.  I don't know how it works anyway.

Zaelon the harab Elder will be Searching the Home province for Magic Sites.  Magic Sites are where Magic Gems are produced and you need Gems to do much of anything starting in mid-game so finding a Gem Income is really important. 

There are four different levels of Magic Sites.  A mage with the proper level and Path will find all appropriate Sites when they Search.  An A1 Mage will find all level 1 Air Sites, an A4 will find all level 1, 2, 3 and 4 sites in a province.  Mages with high levels in multiple Paths are obviously the best to Search with, but you can't be too choosy because you have to get those Gems rolling in as soon as possible.  The large majority of Sites are level 1 or 2 (I forget the exact number) so an early level 2 Search of everything will find almost every thing that is out there.  There are Ritual Spells that do a level 9 Search for Sites in single provinces but they require Gems to cast and may require Research into Schools you otherwise wouldn't spend time on so their value is questionable.

[Alcibiades]

Thanks for the AAR, I'll be following.

Just a quick question for you.  I have this game and I quit playing a while back because I got annoyed at a mechanic that I couldn't figure out if it was either working as designed or just shitty.

I was playing that swamp lizard race, started out with dominion 10, since their marshlands essentially kill anything not them...  But my problem came in that I couldn't spread my dominion outside of my land.  It got to the point that I built a temple in every province i owned ( about 25) and had a priest and my prophet preaching in every border province, could still barely keep my own dominion up.

Didn't make sense and annoyed me, so I quit playing.

[sbr]

I have a theory on what was happening there but if don't know the brass tracks of they system well enough to be sure.  I'll check the ruins when I get home.

[sbr]

My theory was way off.

That situation sounds weird to me after reading the rules and understanding the system.  A Dom 10 Pretender with Temples in every province should have 10+ Dominion in all of your friendly provinces without too much trouble and should spread outward.  It might spread slowly, but maybe you had high Dom enemy Pretenders  and some bad luck, but having trouble keeping your Dominion in your own provinces sounds really wrong.

Also Preaching does not spread Dominion out of the province you are preaching in, it can only raise the Dominion in that province and not by much without a powerful Priest.

[sbr]

Turn 5



No Magical Sites found.   We did find a few Gems though a random event though.



Here is the Map at turn start



We came across the Nation of Man to the east.  Other than meeting Man nothing too exciting happening, other than Mictlan leaving some troops at our agreed upon border.

It is a Scout sneaking that discovered the Nation of Man, so he shouldn't know I have seen him.  I will wait before I make contact.

The numbers in the lower right of the province info screen show the Paths and levels that have searched for Magic Sites in this province.

This is a quick turn.  Well they all have been quick to play, but I can't think of anything interesting to talk about this turn so this chapter will be quick too.

Parshanta, the Warrior Prophet has gathered his armies in the Capital and is ready to move out. 



I am still worried about the number of enemy units in Ecnaphale, the province directly to the east of my Capital, so I will skip it again.  I want to move east, so I will attack the provinces to the south east of my Capital.  It is occupied by Barbarians, the reports over the last 4 turns have showed 50, 30, 30 and 20 units in this province so I am comfortable sending my 50 unit army in.

The army's scripts are pretty basic, the Archers Keep Distance and Fire at Closest and the Infantry Hold then Attack Closest.

The new Caelian Seraph will join the first in the Lab Researching new Evocation Spells.  They will finish Level 1 next month.  Level 2 will require 100 Research Points.



Recruiting is the same as well; another Caelian Seraph, more Raptorian Warriors and Archers.


I now have 3 Scouts and they are spreading out to survey the landscape; one will continue to search the area around the Nation of Man, one will poke around in the Mictlan lands and hope not to make an enemy and the third will head south west and see what it down there.

[sbr]

Turn 6



We beat the Barbarians pretty handily, though we had a few losses.



The random event was not a good one.



We finished a level of Research.



I can't cast any of the Fire spells, and Water mages will be very rare for me, they will require a Harab Elder that gets those in random paths.  I can't do the math but there is a 25% chance to get 1 point in Water, then a 10% chance to get a second point, then another 25% chance for that to be in Water.  My notes say 0.625% but I can't imagine that is right.

Shocking Grasp is a melee range spell that I will likely never use.

Some of the Astral Spell will be useful once my Pretender shows up as he has Astral Level 4.

Here is the map at the start of the turn, zoomed out a bit to get some perspective.



The nation of Man only has taken 2 provinces, and Mictlan has 2 that I can see but they made an announcement in the forum thread that they are going to be attacking the province at the top left, just to the right of the Icon for Ashasairyan.  He says he will immediately leaves after taking it, but taking a province adjacent to other Nation's Capital is close to an Act of War, so we will see how that plays out.

The farmlands province to the east of my Capital now shows as 90 enemy units; over the last 5 turns the report has been:  40,60,40,60,90.  I need to get a Scout in that province ASAP.  As far as I know the number of units won't change, it is just the accuracy of your information.

My reports also show 60 units in the province to the east of the one I just took, but only 20 Lizard Warriors in the province to the south west of Caelum so Parshanta's army will head there directly without reinforcing.  I need to get east quickly but I only have 46 units and losing my army will slow me down more than taking my time.

I continued to recruit Raptorian Warriors and Spire Horn Archers in Caelum, and more Scouts and other assorted generic troops in the western provinces.  Gray Forest, the province I just took, only allows me to recruit Barbarians.  I don't like them because they are Undisciplined which means they cannot be given any direct orders.  They are not any better that my regular units so I don't see any need for them now.

My Scouts are moving around, though focusing on my own area more than I had originally planned.  The Harab Elder is Searching for Magic Sites in Zoglia, just west of Caelum.