Dominions 6 - Piconye - National Overview

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The wee people of piconye are quite hardy, be they poking you with dinnerware or dropping meteors on your head.

[@lambdalandis]

Part of me feels like Piconye is the type of nation that you don’t necessarily pick because you think it’s the best, but because you think YOU’RE the best.

[@MrCatofdoom]

I choose it because of funny gnomes; you choose it because of nepotism. We are not the same.

[@tarsis6123]

Sounds like you had a huge signup for the tourney. Thanks for doing all the work and organizing you do for them. I don't participate but really enjoy the content from them.

[@Lolztrel]

Great video, thanks for keeping up the good content. Love how you praise the point-buffing capabilities of your mages, only for them to throw some meteors on the enemy and win the fight

[@markmittelbach7975]

Piconye forts are also a nightmare to storm as they have defenders for the breach blockers which are really good at that job, and a good amount of crossbows on the wall. The Ind successors nations are really neat, taking the same base set of paths and then going very different ways with them and expanding on all the little parts of Ind.

[@miramosa7768]

I feel like the Cyclops summon is worth mentioning to solve their siege problems. It's a Con 3 spell that scales, minimum 5 and they come with strength 22, so definitely better than the tiny tieflings you otherwise get.

[@MrCatofdoom]

This is a favorite of mine. Really enjoy all the funny stuff you can do with them.

[@MrCatofdoom]

On crossbow builds you need a fair amount of good chaff. Have not really used the defenders for the role but they would prob be good at it.

[@intptree5188]

18:38 It's completely fine; Piconye Defenders are amazing expansion troops that take very little attrition. H3's in the back plinking down heavy cavalry and such. But the problem is that enemy archers and crossbow will often times ignore your Defenders and go straight for the H3's. I'm not great at positioning/scripting but putting the H3's in the back row and Defenders in the front row seems to work almost all the time. Now that I think about it, it's probably worth making some Piconye militia to use as bait during early turns where you are resource-restricted.

[@LucidTactics]

@@intptree5188 yeah I’ll do an expansion episode - I’ve done a couple tests with blesses but not scales expansion testing yet. Imagine I’ll come to a lot of the same conclusions and frustrations- I’ll see if i can figure something out

[@intptree5188]

@@LucidTactics I've done a lot of scales testing and very little bless testing. Honestly between scales, mage bless, and troop bless, troop bless seems the least viable. Far too many holes to plug in any of the sacred units, easier to just lean on a million Sage-Priests to kill stuff. Making a 'Cancer Lich' pretender and putting the bless points into a mage bless is what I ended up with. As far as whole-nation strategy goes, I prefer to theory craft my own stuff and don't pay much attention to what people say in forums. Scales + Defenders + Infinity Sage-Priests has some strengths (sacrificing some Sage-Priests to cast Gifts of Heaven 40 times on round 2), but until you can fix their siege problems and army-wipe problems I wouldn't feel comfortable taking them into high-skill multiplayer. In the one game I played, I had a massive expansion and could win the early fights easily but couldn't take cap/finish war. Cave Grubs kept getting killed and Foul Vapors/Grip of Winter/Howl were a constant threat my mages had to play around. Started 1v1, couldn't finish, then got 3v1'd.

[@LucidTactics]

@@intptree5188 Thanks will help when i do the pretender overview

[@DemonsthenesDominions]

Nature 1s can animate trees, which are pretty good for piconye, since their slowness aligns with your own troops, and they can wade to go kill stuff with their low attack armor piercing attacks.

[@pederw4900]

27:33 EA Mictlan’s Sun Priest was buffed down to 2 commander points near the end of dom5, and MA Mictlan both the Priest King and the Eagle King (or whatever the air one is called) are also both just 2 commander points

[@LucidTactics]

@@pederw4900 good to know; didn’t know that

[@pederw4900]

@@LucidTactics I’ve been playing a lot of MA Mictlan in single player recently, and my hot hot take is that losing blood on almost all their mages is good for the nation. So much easier to play in the early and mid game when your cap only mages are like 60-80 gold cheaper than EA. You can research up to Owl Quills and then go for useful spells in schools other than Blood like Group Barkskin and Fireball (be careful mixing these😂), you can pump out Eagle Warriors from all your forts and every x turns send a Priest King with a line of OP Jaguar Warriors to lead them. Imprisoned bless.

[@EvilTwinn]

One of the nations where a precision bless is very fun on. Point buffing is something you can do pretty well, but the fact that quite realistically you only make mages which go into a communion and are blessed can lead to some very fun evocation spam.

[@pederw4900]

Undying 5+Enchanted Blood would help your sacreds against that chip damage a lot if you’re worried about attrition. More than double their base hp seems pretty good

[@shang6158]

By my estimation, with enough resources in your cap circle you could get up to 30 Sacreds per turn, and they don't have the recruitment limits that Ind has on the better types.

[@kjell744]

HP bless or undying + Enchanted Blood bless, would be strong on this nation.

[@АлексейХанинв]

Combat move 2 is actually an important asset if you expect to fight flyers. No amount of holding will help them to land on your commanders if you position those guys on hold and attack behind your commanders.

[@LucidTactics]

great point!

[@abundanttree]

May be worth taking a look at heroes available to the nation during these overviews to show if luck is worth taking or not. For some nations, they really arent impactful, but for Lemuria, Ettimu is always something to look forward to, etc. Edit: I checked Mod inspector because I was curious and apparently they don't have any national heroes? That's lame.

[@DemonsthenesDominions]

Yeah Illwinter generally only adds heroes when they have inspiration for them, and the new nations are basically all without them. I think the Worthy heroes mod adds some.

[@mqb3gofjzkko7nzx38]

Withering Weapons is always fun with sacred crossbows.

[@danielsaper8264]

The sieging strength issue really hurts these guys I think. Seriously investing in gate cleavers later on isn't a bad idea. Overall, the nation has a ton of strengths, but also a ton of weakness, and working around those is tricky - armies melting to a few mages throwing fireballs, things like curse of stones, every battlefield wide spell, a prot thug with a frost brand - you really need to tailor your army and buffs to exactly what you're facing.

[@Kris_Lighthawk]

I hadn't really had a good look at Piconye before, but it do actually seem like a good and unique nation. I think you missed the perhaps most obvious bless: Undying x5 + enhanced blood would really take care of the low hp problem on your sacred troops and mages (and you can always throw a shroud om non-sacred mages when needed) It would take you from below human hp to a fair deal above human hp. Another really good (but expensive) bless would be luck (Which the nation don't have access natural to). Imagine how much harder your point buffed troops (and mages) would be to kill with luck added... Another idea could be to take air shield awake (or dormant). Now your Baculite (and your sacred mages) don't have to fear crossbows much, so you don't really need the shield guys (except for expansion if taken dormant). And apart from the shield, Baculite are superior in any way. If you combine air shield with Undying x5 + enhanced blood Baculite become really solid sacreds. Given the very slow map move of almost everything you have, wind walker may also be a good option

[@Stadtpark90]

With size 2, you can have 4 Bodyguards standing on the same tile as your mage. Assume they have Pikes, they get 4 repell-checks… Edit: 32:39 I need to try this! Having 4 mages in one tile makes the point buff just in time. 34:10

[@DemonsthenesDominions]

Only the targeted unit, not the others in the square, gets to repel since Dominions 5.

[@evanlogan3595]

I'd suggest Cave Grubs for sieges. Not great otherwise, apart the corrosion on their attack, but they come at 20 siege per gem at E1 Conj 1. Biggest problems are that they require a cave and are slow as molasses, but Picyone is already incredibly slow.

[@DemonsthenesDominions]

I'd worry about their combat speed being too high and thus them wading to the front :)

[@evanlogan3595]

@@DemonsthenesDominions I hate that's a serious threat to this nation.

[@cz85]

These h3s also have 100 leader ship, which is also another bonus over bogarus

[@bobfrombelgium]

Please tell us you have some juicy dom6 multiplayer series coming up.

[@SpentaofWater349]

Praise the Pantocrator, my prayers have been answered!

[@I-ONLY-BUILD-MECHS-AND-DUSTERS]

Holy awesome

[@hydrafan8]

Finally the best nation of the era gets some love... ;-)

[@Stadtpark90]

Those Eagle-Knights give 9 attacks per square. If you bring like 90 of them, that is 30 squares of 9 attacks in the first round. Which usually insta-routes the enemy archer section(- depending on where they land). But then you lose like 5% of your mounts for every round the combat goes. Losing 20% of your mounts is not uncommon. And the incomplete units often didn’t make it home (- maybe I shouldn’t have gone into Luck -2 scales? Or it is the low morale, when they don’t have a leader? Or the distance to the next Fort?) Edit: On the other hand: Quickened Vanheres give 12 Attacks per square and they hit double as hard, which actually matters, when you want to get through enemy protection (- and they don’t have those first strike lances that go away). - But then the Eagle knights instantly close the distance and give nice harass debuffs, as long as there are enough of them.

[@gitsnak777]

Hmm, I have a hard time being interested in LA armies, but this one sounds pretty interesting

[@Warraci]

But, what about Second Breakfast? Elevenses?

[@Rakykia]

For those N1s, personally I look at them as web casters. It's really amazing in dom 6, and has great synergy with Piconye preferring the 'come fight us and get pelted by xbows' stratagem.

[@qaz120120]

Have you considered flying bless?

[@andrewmorrow7472]

First thing I thought of too

[@Kris_Lighthawk]

I dont think that gluttony is much of a problem on Piconye, gluttony 1 only adds +0.5 supply usage, making their units supply usage the same as that of humans.

[@DarkSideCookies]

Hey Kris, Larger would make point buffing significantly worse, but would also turn all your hobbits into humans with a siege strength of 1 right?

[@Kris_Lighthawk]

@@DarkSideCookies Siege strength is dependent on strength, not size. Larger does give +3 strength which would make Piconye siege strength similar to avarange humans, but only the sacreds, so it would be quite limited how much that would help. I think larger is a bad idea for Piconye. They can just use the bird riders or summon stuff for sieges.

[@DarkSideCookies]

@ Yeah, I was thinking of the strength bonus from it since it needs to apply on the campaign map. I thought with maybe a couple hundred sacreds from all the sacred production, and maybe a hundred bird riders plus some other stuff we could get to 500 or so siege strength without having to dive too deep into summons.

[@Kris_Lighthawk]

@@DarkSideCookies It could work, but I think you are better off just making more bird riders.

[@Doombot221]

Gift of health would be hilarious on this faction. Bunch of lil folk with absurd health stats and strong dom push.

[@LucidTactics]

Yeah thats a really good idea if you can control it.

[@yugonostalgia8961]

Illwinter cooked with all of the Ind successor nations damn

[@CaptianSwan]

Its weird, you seem to want good scales for your troops which are good and small so they benefit the most from having huge numbers to take advantage of density. And you also get 3 sacred troop types with +1 limit per temple which suggests a bless strat would be good. You get sacred communion mages so a mage bless would be good. Expansion feels rough so you want an awake expander. So good scales, good bless, awake expander. In my few test games I always feel like I'm significantly lacking on whatever option I miss.

[@MazuiLakon]

*Pee-kan-ye* 💀💀💀

[@TheMelnTeam]

I wonder if anybody has died to an obfuscate mass preaching yet, haha. IMO this nation seems pretty weak, which is fun. Maybe I missed a bless that covers both expansion + first war well enough though. Low hp remains a problem all game, though perhaps can be overcome.

[@pirat66621]

video needs a chapter breakdown to skip around easier. Great video otherwise!