Dominions 6 - Patch Notes - 6.15 & 6.16

[@DemonsthenesDominions]

Project Self had a few very solid uses I've seen. One is to add skellyspam to a magic phase attack. Another is to drop Gifts from Heaven, if you've got a good Earth path too. Finally you can use it to fluff a magic phase thug. There's probably other things you can do, like Falling Fires spam, but they all feel pretty weak compared to the above. A class of tactic that I think could be interesting for some nations, like EA Machaka, could be to run ambushes with a national squad of stealthy skellyspammers to stall the enemy, plus a projected Pretender to do big Evocations or Soul Slays or whatever to actually kill elite units that can walk through skeletons. It would be kinda cool and thematic if you could bring Glamour gems only in projection attacks, to be able to do stuff like Phantasmal Army... Finally explaining what's actually happening with the Mist Covered Highlands attacks :)

[@AOReaper]

Yea, I was one of the guys that put one of the first Grand Communions videos up, its really kind of disappointing how they work, and its sort of depressing that they took something with such a neat idea, and sort of made it a REALLY niche thing for only a few nations, and they took virtually all of the power out of it (unless you hyper focus on it). And as you mentioned: its very confusing that it shares the name with the normal communion, but essentially shares none of the traits of it (or rather the formulaic power increases). Its almost like they unwittingly made the mechanic too awkward to use instinctively, but as a "win more" mechanic, because if you can afford to abuse that many mages just laying around: you're already getting away with something haha :) Always love hearing your thoughts on these patches Lucid! Appreciate it!

[@kevin0117rc]

Yea I wish IllWinter would revamp siege battles. imagine having a bunch of mages that can cast gifts but they can't bust through a wooden palisade... Maybe have walls have hitpoint and be props on the battle similar to stones and trees. Along with the sieging create holes mechanic.

[@shang6158]

"Press Tab to view details in battle unit overview" refers to the list of units you can bring up by pressing F1 during battle replay. It adds a column that shows afflictions, I don't know if there's any information besides that.

[@SpentaofWater349]

Protective force applied before armor might save mossbody/mistform from popping sometimes, not sure though.

[@LucidTactics]

Yeah thats a good point

[@michaelbodell7740]

The 6.15 change on the mercs impacts how I'd treat Helmut as before on a lot of nations I'd want to overspend on him, twice born him, and then have him available as the mason to over upgrade forts. If he dies and comes back as a twicedborn chasis he loses the mason tag (or at least did in 5 when he died of a disease in one game I had done this with him). I think the month long gems are a great change. Gem burning on a turn-by-turn thing makes sense as that is a cost/benefit question and allows some one to react to that in an interactive way. Gem burning in the middle of the turn is an annoying thing (and it would be even greater if gem usage could also be tweaked to be more liberal when you have these settings in play since the other side of things are the traps that are just below triggering gem usage, since there is much less down side to gem usage when it persists through all phases - and below gem usage army wide wipes or poison traps shouldn't be something that works IMHO). On the fort sieging, I think it is consistent with wanting bigger armies and more premium on summon some of the sieging friendly troops (even some call of the wild can add a fair bit to siege strength) or gate crashers or the like. I think it would be good if there were more summons that were the equivalent of siege equipment (some of: siege towers, battering rams, catapults, ballistas, onagers, trebuchets, etc. Heck even ladders) that could possibly both help with the speed of siege as well as possibly either opening up other ways through/over the walls of forts and/or firing for your side or impacting the fort battle. I don't know if some of those should be things you summon ahead of time and take with you, some that you summon remotely on a fort that is under siege, or some of them that comes up automatically after so many turns or after so many negative wall strength (or some combination of the above), but I think that would help. There is Crumble as a spell which sort of does a form of this, but not sure if there couldn't be more play here.

[@LucidTactics]

Good thoughts, thanks for sharing!

[@DarkSideCookies]

Arcane Analysis was + or - 5 gems from the exact amount last I checked. Grand Communions should be a very interesting way to control globals in the deep late game. For instance, Pythium could ad 300+ gems to the overcast of a 1200 pearl Nexus via a grand communion based on having a lot of mage paths present. This would essentially make it impossible to dispel outside of repeat casts of the dispels that lower overcast strength. Unless Grand Communions are capped on the max cast for a mage path.

[@LucidTactics]

Yeah thats a usecase!

[@cryoshakespeare4465]

I think a fun way to do grand communions that are path boosting would be if it did a difficult mr check to feeblemind the communion slaves, and could horror mark the master. Sort of like burning mages to cast a high level spell, which could be pretty powerful as a path access method. I'd also move it from being a nation specific priest mage thing to being maybe a blood astral crosspath requirement. (I'm sure there's major imbalance with that idea, but, just as a basis for the concept, maybe there could even be a chance for the feebleminded slaves to be turned into horrors who try to assassinate the master)

[@Kris_Lighthawk]

I have always hated gembating, so I will probably prefer to play with the monthly longevity mod. Still, even the lesser one will help a lot.

[@moleman7632]

you skipped through the white dragon armour quite quickly. It is a big upgrade on the copper plate: It's +3 armour, -1 encumbrance and +5 SR for 5 extra gems. Its extremely good now to take spring hawk thrones

[@LucidTactics]

Ah i never noticed that copper plate's SR got nerfed (used to be 25). Good point!

[@diazinth]

I think project self is there to bring artillery to the battlefield without risking your mages. Gem stuff you'll have to bring. Can illusions be in a communion?

[@Timlagor]

44:00 I'd rather see 2000 integrity to get one hole in the fort wall and then another 3000 to get the second (5000 total not the 3000 you suggest). I think my way is better but certainly it's the way to try first

[@tarsis6123]

Isn't protective force the one that has like 20% chance to stop all damage (exceptions like AN or true damage or some)? Like on the.. dancing shield? So having it apply first might make your armor not get corroded by acid or such?

[@LucidTactics]

It blocks a fixed amount normally 20 or 30!

[@philippemontesinos9034]

The fort change I think makes strong earth/nature/blood income a lot more oppressive in the late game, just because they can freeze up your raided land, dropping forts left and right and forcing you to siege those down, and unless you can magic phase raid the land they raided, you are screwed. Edit : Fixed my awful grammar due to writing that comment in 15 sec while waiting in line to get a slush puppies

[@DemonsthenesDominions]

Yeah I'll admit I liked how it used to work and wish they'd just documented it rather than fixing it.

[@vagrant2863]

You know I'm surprised they haven't made a high level spell that destroys forts. Level 9 spells should help break stalemates after all. Heck, even one that does forces starvation would be cool (by reducing castle supplies to 0).

[@Nelzy]

Agree that they should add options to make more breaches in the walls by spending more time.

[@tarsis6123]

Well, I mean, if I'm playing against, say, Lucid, I'm not keen on him having a global, because it is likely a key element of his strat. I would be just as mad at that Lucid guy for putting up the global again, as you would be against the dispeller?

[@igor32BRO]

Im gonna watch the whole thing but there ain’t a time stamp for .15/.16 also love your stuff so far, going through the catalogue, and powering through the Atlantis game rn

[@LucidTactics]

Forgot - thanks will put in now.

[@bodyguardik]

Thank you for Dominions content. From Russia with Love.

[@andrewcole4843]

New Chest makes fits "old man" pretender I am using used as rainbow (inc Earth) titan with its discounted paths and using power of spheres / astral booster climb to rings. Thanks for the reminder.

[@FLESKFIST]

Gembaiting should definitely still be in the game, but yeah, there should be a limit to how oppressive a 3v1 can be, it's already unfair enough.

[@jhenmhor9558]

what happens when you cast multiple rituals in a province with a grand communion, does the effects of the communion affect all rituals cast or not ? If yes it seems to be very expoitable to me

[@LucidTactics]

Think its all but not sure...

[@alexsanderrain2980]

yeah the acid res thing seems like defeating the whole point of it.

[@yugonostalgia8961]

One thing I really, really don't like about dom6 is that wall defenders in fort battles can hit basically the entire battlefield with their arrows. Even if I put my mages toward the very back of the setup screen, they still hit at least a couple with their first opening volleys, no matter what buffs you put on them. Not sure there's any counter at all other than 'don't play human nations' or '10 gems of gear on every communion slave' :(

[@LucidTactics]

Think of you make the mages have extra buffs wall archer might target something else

[@yugonostalgia8961]

@@LucidTactics I cast arrow fend turn 1 every combat! I still lose an average of 2 slaves to the first volley bc the wall archer range goes around the whole map! Not so much complaining as just very frustrated. And too lazy to mod #wall_archer_range 10 or whatever

[@LucidTactics]

@@yugonostalgia8961 yeah you can try doing personal buffs on mages prior to communioning (those often have faster cast times). Can also try putting some high hp low prot no shield guys near the wall to draw archer agro.

[@ELtaco37]

Sick

[@TTHJJD100]

Grand communion is kinda disappointing. Even if you had S2-S3's lying around you need to stop researching for an entire turn to see any significant returns on overcasting it. Maybe it's better in lategame.

[@brinkbleash]

Im all in favor for exploits being removed when they very obviously go against the way the mechanic was intended to work, even if it’s really sad.

[@BudenniyS]

So the whole cracking down on exploits takes the fun out of the game, because it's definitely not adding any "balance" like Lemuria still exists so balance is non existent... What they do is make game more deterministic and boring by reducing impact of skill on outcome, it becomes more of a general numbers game and only makes already strong nations better and bad nations worse because now you can't even shift the scales by using fun mechanics. Overall none of the individual changes ruin the game but it's really bad direction this is going.

[@BudenniyS]

Project Self was barely useful before now just a useless spell... Expensive and useless

[@Holypikemanz]

@LucidTactics Why the F, "Ma Man" gets chorus master and not Eriu/Tir Na N'og is beyond me. Lucid, crack Ill Winter on the head for me.

[@LucidTactics]

Yeah i wanted eiru to get them too :P Eiru is more fun in dom6 atleast :D