Dominions 5 - Battlefield Wipes Deep Dive!

[@Isvoor]

0:00 Me walking out the door every Monday because it can't be that bad

[@DreamingAboutDragons]

I once saw an empowered colossus equipped with the artifact howl armor casting soul drain on turn 0. In that case, friendly fire on the wolves was 100% the intended effect, because it healed it up ridiculously quickly. Fortunately for everyone else in the game, the player decided to fly the damn thing into the middle of a giant pack of Agarthan mages that shattered it in a microsecond. (the game ended before it could become relevant again)

[@charlesballiet7074]

"...the survivors of the battle to have reached us tell of ribbons of fire tearing flesh from bone, and thick clouds of poison that rotted whole formations of men to pieces in moments, our wizards were powerless to stop the carnage" -myth the fallen lords

[@Kris_Lighthawk]

I have never really thought about this before, but Pangaea can make use of solar brilliance with much less risk than other nations since all their units have recuperation.

[@humbugnonsens9098]

Yup. Same with foul vapours (which they have easy access to) and bone grinding (which they don't unless asspoodle) and the pierce res buff that causes disease. Really any affliction.

[@charlesballiet7074]

I got to say its this kind of magic that really puts a smile on my face and reminds me of story's of powerful sorcerers who could channel their power to decimate entire army's. would like to see a light-web one day

[@Bill_Garthright]

I remember trying Foul Vapors myself, playing as MA C'tis against... Phaeacia, I think? (Just SP.) My guys all had 7 units of poison resistance, so it was going to be _great,_ huh? Surely 7 PR would be enough to stop 5 poison damage. I was giddy with anticipation. :) Well, it turned out that I killed more of my own guys than that of the enemy. True, we eventually killed many of them, but it just _decimated_ my army. Phaeacia's units had no poison resistance themselves, but they had lots more hit points. And 7 points of PR wasn't nearly enough to keep my guys from dying. That was a shock! :) Great video! Thanks, Lucid.

[@humbugnonsens9098]

Sounds like you were unlucky. Even vs the collosi hit point pool foul vapours should average kill them much faster than your dudes. But, sometimes the RNG fucks you over majorly.

[@Kris_Lighthawk]

I am fairly sure that the lightning bolts from wartfull skyes only hit one target in each square. That would make is pretty different from the other battlefield wipes, which hit everyone in each square...

[@JoJeck]

Excellent explanation, using the spreadsheet and Mod Inspector together helped a lot to explain very complex concepts.

[@ClubbingSealCub]

Adding to the list of nations that can acid storm: Ubar can use it with the Marid summons.

[@loggy3759]

For acid spells, the chance of being rusted is 4% per base acid damage. Code diving otherwise indicates that the manual's description of what rust does seems correct (2% per base damage to damage armour, plus 25% on hit for weapons to be damaged for -2 damage or -1 if blunt). All in all acid storm will rust up the battlefield pretty well but relatively low odds on damage for the hit piece of armour to be damaged for -20% protection does not seem that amazing. 2% per damage to rust means things will have to be hit quite hard, and the odds of them then being hit in the same armour piece and -20% protection mattering after that on troops sounds fairly slim to me. My other thoughts on stuff discussed here: Solar brilliance also kinda notably damages demons as well, but they tend to have much more MR than your standard skelespam... Astral tempest's interruption effect is basically a guaranteed interrupt if the mage fails a MR check. It also hits twice as many squares as the damage component does. I also don't believe that innates can be interrupted because they need not prepare spells. Earthquake actually doesn't care for fatigue penalty to defence. The roll to resist is defence skill (no dice or DRN) vs 3d6 exploding. Armour modifiers are applied to your defence skill for this, but weapons (such as main gauche of parrying) are not. The same goes for any effect (such as tail sweeps) that have the defence negate flag. Every round, decay is 1% to offer a hard MR check to end. I'm also not certain on how dying from getting too old works currently, but being old definitely rapidly increases the amount of damage you take from it.

[@lolM88]

How many gems for opening segment? :P good vid

[@Doombot221]

Acid does corrode armour so there is a time period where acid storm could become more deadly as the ap damage also destroys the armour it is already piercing

[@Mizelei2012]

Excellent stuff. I just got into a war with Caelum and I actually have Jade Sorceresses and Thisle Maces lying around so I think I could start using that Foul Vapors spell.

[@somefallingleaves]

Does fog warriors blocking the damage from Bone Grinding also block the limp or cripple?

[@humbugnonsens9098]

Iirc yes, but am not 100℅ sure. Ethereal definitely protects against them though even when hit by the damage.

[@somefallingleaves]

So to note, I tested this today. Units that have mist form completely negate the damage of bone grinding still have to take a magic resist roll to avoid the afflictions. This was also true for units who were ethereal and negated the damage with ethereal.

[@TheMelnTeam]

Blunt damage that hits head is doubled. A 10 damage mundane head attack is still weak, but until army of gold/lead it's not nothing for targets like skelly spam or backline mages. IMO still worth putting up rain of stones especially if someone is doing luck bugs/skelly spam/you're catching a big stack of siege chaff etc. Fire storm catches units on fire in addition to the AP damage, so if you can find a way to block them getting FR up it will hurt a lot. Even 5 FR just kills that though (same for conflagration). Soul drain applies to "caster" right? Doesn't that mean it would transfer from communion master to communion slaves? Extra gem does not apply to the 2nd path in crosspath spells. You can only boost the primary path with gem casting (things like PotS/phoenix power/etc still apply to secondary paths though). Bloodletting seems like more hassle than it's worth in most cases. Maybe on a ring of returning titan/hero or something in magic phase.

[@LucidTactics]

Soul drain doesnt transfer to communions. Would be cool if it did :P

[@humbugnonsens9098]

Thanks for a great video! One niche wipe you missed is Unraveling.

[@Leiska86]

The rust effect from Acid Storm comes from acid damage, not from the spell itself. This is what the wiki has to say about it: Acid damage can inflict Rust. It has the same chance as fire. Only units with iron weapons or iron armor can be affected by Rust. Rusty armor can be damaged if it takes a hit in combat. Chance for Rusty armor to be damaged = damage inflicted (before armor protection, but after shield protection) * 2% Rusty weapons have a 25% chance of being damaged when they inflict a hit on something. Damaged weapons have their damage reduced by 2, except for blunt weapons which have their damage reduced by 1.

[@nicolinrucker5181]

Rain of Stones: The Early Answer to Pythium.

[@humbugnonsens9098]

Ehhh. I've never seen it pay off well vs communions. It comes at Evo7 and has a 200℅ cast time. At that point every slave, even in a small pythic communion, will have twist fate, liquid body, air shield (though unsure if it helps vs ros) and personal luck at the very least, and usually some combination of bark/ironskin, regen, and various other stuff as well. The masters are a bit more vulnerable but IME tend to have some defense if RoS is on the table.

[@Mewobiba]

IMO Soul Drain is less useful as a battlefield wipe than as a very powerful buff for a centerpiece mage in a big army. Soul Vortex relies on being close to the enemy, which is great for SC's but not really major mages. So IMO the way to use it is when you have a giant frikkin' SD mage (pretender, tart, järnvidja, etc), stuff it full of pen gear, have it drop Soul Drain, and then spam out other powerful mr-neg spells like Bone Grinding or something.

[@edwardzdankiewicz9068]

So do these blast your own army too? Can multiple mages cast them from your army to make them more deadly? What if mages in both armies cast the same wipes?

[@LucidTactics]

Yeah they hit everyone including friendly fire. Only one effect can be active per battle - including enemy and friendly.

[@humbugnonsens9098]

For battlefield enchantments (eg foul vapours), only one of each specific spell at any given point in a battle. So if you have it up the opponent can't, but if your caster dies either player can cast it again. And yes, unless otherwise noted (eg Master Enslave), it affects everyone equally.

[@Leiska86]

@@humbugnonsens9098 This only applies to battlefield enchants that affect all units. Others, such as Howl and Wailing Winds, do not have this restriction.

[@JOnatanKERtis]

Rain of stones go vs helms and sheald. Arrow fend help a lot as i know. In terms of rust Acid type dmg is less effective vs magical armor and weapons (like ma_ulm). And usless vs natural protection and bless. So keep in mind.

[@zorrozalai]

Natural protection (and hardskin) works against AN damage, like wratful skies? Also, AP damage halves armor protection, or total protection including natural protection?

[@LucidTactics]

natural protection doesnt work against AN damage. and AP damage halves total protection :)

[@humbugnonsens9098]

What Lucid said is right, just want to add an addendum: vs attacks that hit a shield, it calculates the shield protection separately from body prot, so you don't suffer diminishing returns. Doesn't matter for most spells and doesn't matter for AN damage though.

[@Shellslime]

Great video!

[@Lancelot2000Lps]

I personal did not like too ccasst acid storm because for the same price i get a green lion, that can do acid damaged too and when it lifes the battle i can use it more often!!! But i am a sucker for the green lions!!!

[@MrMasterCGO]

Great video

[@lonelyswordsman1177]

Isn't it spelled wipes not whipes? Or is this some American English thing?

[@LucidTactics]

Ah whoops - fixed the title, but the typo shall live in on in the thumbnail.

[@kirbyone]

It depends on if you are using toilet paper to remove the enemy army or not

[@Nekranon]

Can't you just have a mage cast Solar Brilliance to counter darkness and then either run away or teleport off the battlefield? Also, how does Doom synergize with spells like Astral Tempest, Soul Drain and Bloodletting?

[@LucidTactics]

I believe it only cancels it while the effect is active. So once the mage leaves darkness will resume functioning. Doom will increase chance of affliction from all those things. People will definitely get pretty afflicted from it, better of course that they die than just get afflicted.

[@matthewyang5752]

Just have a whole army of mages with bodyguards though they might be tired by the time, they reach their range for their spells XD