srifenbyxp wrote:WALL OF TEXT- I READ IT ALL BUT DEAR GOD MAN SUMMARIZE NEXT TIME
That was me trying to sumarize.
I didn't even get started on Ulm Lavamancy or optimal research rotation, nor did I touch on thugs, magical communions, magic site searching, breaking into underwater, castles, and magic scripting.
Let me try to summarize even more, though I think I can only get myself down to a fence of text. Dom 4 is largely a game about playing with high end complicated ideas and using them to break the shit out of everyone's expectations.
Ulm Lavamancy: Ulm gets earth and fire on its mages. That means in combat they get lava spells. Lava spells make up for earth being weak damage wise in evocation and fire having shitty armor penetration, allowing you to shoot globs of death that deal high damage armor bypass damage.
Optimal research rotations: Always remember you are researching to get something. Ulm plays a construction game with its smiths, but construction rarely is good to rush because you don't have anything fancy to put it on. Look at your elements, look at the units you can summon with them and the spells you can cast, and go for research paths that give you immediate benefit from that. Ulm likes to use earth alteration and enchantment to buff defenses and fire to buff attack, wants to summon something fat, wants some lite evocation for early expansion, and then once it gets something fat to summon wants to summon a bunch of it to equip with the swankiest magic items.
Thugs: A unit that, while not able to kill armies, can distrupt a battle so much it isn't funny. Generally are more about soaking attacks than killing quickly because units repeatedly attack their target, so a thug that is nearly impossible to kill ends up being like a tar pit. A good early game thug option is to get some form of easy magical creature summon with tons of protection and HP, and giving it two vine shields and having it charge the enemy.
Magical communions: Astral mages can link together using two 1 thamaturgy spells. The communion master's magical paths are all improved based on the number of mages in the communion acting as slaves. You need a number of slaves equal to 2^n, or two to the power of N, where N is the amount of magic you want boosted. For example 8 mages slaving boosts ALL masters in the communion by 3 in their magical paths. Slaves can't cast spells, and they work together to share fatigue from casting.
Magic site searching: Magical sites are vital because gems determine your end game power. Mages can find new sites that generate magical gems by searching, and each site has a magical path level that determiens the type and power of a mage needed to find it. Mages can be part of your expansion parties but you don't want to stop expansion to site search. Have groups of mages search areas you conquer to find magical sites related to your empire's elements. Areas filled with your dominion that don't have scales you selected for a long time often have magical sites. Sites with negative effects are already active before finding them, and often the negative effect can be increasing death scales or changing heat scales.
Breaking into underwater: Get a pretender able to summon a water mage, or who can summon someone who can lead parties underwater a well as troops who can go underwater or you are dead fucked. Death mages can be sufficient to break into underwater.
Castles: Don't build castles next to each other stupid!
Magical scripting: Never just send mages into battle to cast random spells or they often just buff themselves endlessly. But don't order them to just throw fire all day. Often times the best idea is to buff themselves once or twice and then have them cast the spells you need. Mages are what win high end battles, so knowing when to have them autopilot fireflies and when to have them cast a high end earth buff is key. Remember that they sometimes need gems to cast the spell at all, and high fatigue cost spells often will require gems from mages who are only just able to cast them to reduce the cost of fatigue.
srifenbyxp wrote:
And you know it's a good day when you take 63 units and plow through a doom stack of 140, another stack of 80 and a third stack of 50. 8 Cavalry units out flanking and killing their commander routes them more badly than in total war games.
This generally only works vs AI. Versus players you will need more than 8 to break into a flank. Magically enhanced super cavalry can be funny though, like turning your knights to pure iron and making them so big they just trample over everything using earth and nature magic. A flying unit isn't often enough because good players will have their mages not be at the rear of combat. Of course if you spot them there... well... too bad so sad right?