Hi all, I am hoping to find a player to replace me in PBEM76. Contrary to the usual posts of this type, this is not a desperate situation. I'll put the rest in spoilers so the other guys in the game don't read it.

For a while now, I've had this itch to play something hard and tactical, with not overly long missions. Something that makes you think, use combined arms, and quickly see the consequences of failure. Commandos, Jagged Alliance, X-Com, that kind of thing. But I want a lighter experience than the current X-Com, which is too much for me to get into. Lighter not in the sense of difficulty, but in terms of the abundance of features and choices, screens and modes. Doesn't even have to have a campaign, in fact I would prefer a set of scenarios that you can play in whatever order, and maybe multiplayer functionality, to a protracted campaign.

Dominus Galaxia is a MoO 1-inspired game that has been in closed beta for awhile, but is still a ways off from release. 

We've just migrated our closed beta test to Steam, and now we're looking for more testers. Please shoot me a message if you're interested, but be quick as there are a limited number of keys up for grabs! Be aware we're only doing 64-bit Windows at this moment (more platforms will come online closer to release).

EDIT:

KickStarter is here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sta...us-galaxia

And the beta build can be found at:

https://starchart-interactive.itch.io/dominus-galaxia

What's the leading cause of Climate Change?

If you said ALIENS, you're dead right! Who else would do so much to screw up the Earth's atmosphere (bigly)? It's part of their sinister scheme I tell you!

So, as I watch the remains of 'ol Harvey move away and thank our neighbourhood's investment in drainage for keeping our home safe, it seems a perfect time to kill some Alien scum.

This is a blind run-through of War of the Chosen (or WotC as people with no familiarity of what else that acronym stands for insist on calling it). It will start out as a solo game, but if anyone else has interest in joining in then I'm open to turning it into an SG.

On to the setup and we've got a new starting image here with a coweled figure - ooooo:

Going to risk going in blind with Commander but not taking Ironman; I'll keep manual Ironman as best I can, but I want to guard against potential bugs and ill-explained/unfair new mechanics.

Tutorial on so we get the full intro to the new stuff. Speaking of:

Old DLC enabled, with new integration; I guess we'll see what that means.

And so we start with a new pre-Gatecrasher intro:



Cowled lady sneaks into the Advent medical facility to bust a few heads and scout out the Commander's presence.

The Gatecrasher Tutorial is still the same railroad with two redshirts, aged sweater-guy and Kelly:



Also Codex buns:


The Commander is safely extracted and Tygen rips out the chip:


There's a quick stop by the science department to start some research before we're off on our next whirlwind adventure:

Luke's old mission to get a Power Converter!

Some observed behaviours that are annoying or really strange.

1. proximity warning
While in general the rule that an army close to the cities of an AI provokes a warning and a loss of relations makes sense, it has some effects that are either really annoying and don't make much sense.
1a) armies defending nodes and towers should be ignored, at least if not strong enough to be a threat.
I've had 2 AIs offer a wizards pact that I accepted, just to see the relation drop because a node somewhere is close to one of their cities. The troops didn't even move. While this might be somewhat exploitable, it makes little sense for the game to expect you to abandon your nodes, this might even happen close to your capital... The cities are already ignored, hopefully it won't be too difficult to add nodes and towers?
1b) A city just created shouldn't be considered.
I've often had the case of an AI founding a city close to someone exploring and immediately feeling offended.
1c) Exploring is quite impossible if you want to keep a wizard pact, how about raising the distance from which a city is observed (but without report on the troops inside) to make it a bit less frustrating? It seems windows minefield when you go around with a trireme. The problem is that you don't even know that a place is some AI's territory, so you might stumble on their land and trigger the loss without even wanting. If I remember correctly it even happens as soon as the troop enters? Maybe the loss could happen on the following turn if you don't retreat? That would make it coherent with what the text says, something like "go away or we'll be unhappy".

2. AI diplomacy
In my current game, the 3 arcanus AIs were all at war. A few turns later they're best buddies, a wizard pacts and two alliances, and there's two good profiles and an evil one who is a lot weaker than the others. It makes little sense.

As per my latest post in the ghouls thread, I believe that the AI's current biggest problem is the vulnerability to fortress strikes.

If an AI sends a doomstack towards the human lands, the human has two options.  One: They can build a counter doomstack strong enough to attack the AI doomstack before it reaches its target.  Two: The human can dump a doomstack in to garrison whatever the AI is targetting.  This second option is a little problematical because the AI doomstack may switch targets at that point, which may result in the human requiring the equivalent of a doomstack in all of their garrisons.

However, on the reverse side, if the human sends a doomstack towards the AI, especially to do what we refer to as a fortress strike, then generally the AI has one huge problem with this.  The human will usually do so with a stack powerful enough to kill the AI fortress by itself - however, this generally has the side effect of meaning the human doomstack has enough overland army strength that nothing short of the AI capital garrison will even consider attacking the human doomstack.  This means that even though there may literally be dozens of AI stacks of units nearby, none of them will attack the human doomstack until it is weakened.  This means the human can literally wait and pick the time to attack the fortress so that the human knows they will succeed.


I'd like to add a new targetting/diplomacy feature to the AI:

If there is a human stack within 6 squares of the AI capital, it should be targetted by all stacks of 7-9 units the AI has within reach REGARDLESS of the comparative overland strength; and the AI should actively try to build stacks of 9 near its capital (which it already does to a large extent). Basically, this is to give the AI the chance to use combat spells to at least weaken the human doomstack.  Good chance it will do nothing, but right now, leaving the human doomstack to wander around unopposed just leads the AI being banished. City garrisons (especially the fortress garrison) would be exempt from this rule to attack the human stacks.

The human should get a warning if it leaves a stack within 8 squares of the AI capital.  If at least 5 turns go by with no human units within 8 squares of the AI capital, the warning will be reset.

The warning should basically be 'I don't care how friendly we are, even if I'm peaceful and we're allies. Get away from my fortress or I'll destroy your offending troops.'

The warning itself will have no diplomatic penalty. If the human leaves, hurray, diplomacy continues without notice. (Given the 8 square distance, I think this is required, as this will cover a big chunk of the map.) Since presumably it will be the AI attacking the human and losing in most cases, I don't THINK there would be any diplomatic penalties there either? So the human is free to stay near the enemy fortress and be attacked, without actually changing the diplomacy of the game.

This will have a secondary side effect, that the AI will claim all cities and nodes within 6 squares of its capital as it's own. If there are enemy cities in that range, that could lead to potential wars, but I don't think this is a problem. If something is that close to a fortress, the AI SHOULD consider it theirs, in order to protect themselves.

Edit: I'm aware this leads to potential abuse with the human sending lots of small stacks near the enemy capital to use up mana. But since the human can already do that, I don't think it's an issue. And if the AI attacks and wins a battle, I believe that has major diplomacy repercussions, so the human would pay for it anyway.

Now that we changed artifact costs, I wanted to play using an Artificier hero strategy again....but I don't know if it even still works. Maybe we overnerfed it?
(to put it simply, this is the strategy that relies mainly on heroes to clear nodes and conquer - nonhero troops are primarily self-defense, garrison, and filler in the hero armies.)

First of all, the wizard.
1 Artificier - This is obviously needed for an Artificier strategy.
1 Famous - Not really optional anymore - with the first 30 turns having no heroes, this is essential to make sure you get a hero in a reasonable amount of time. You could afford waiting 40 turns for the first hero originally, but now that the clock starts to tick on turn 30, that would make it turn 70 - by then you already lost the game if you weren't doing anything.

5 Life - Not optional - 5 books are now required for the good enchantments (Invulnerability, Lionheart)
5 Sorcery - Not optional - You need it for Phantasmal and Invisibility.

This still leaves you without Teleportation, but that's acceptable.
The problem here? First of all, zero flexibility. Not even a single pick you can use on something different. So you can't play this as a Myrran, you can't have Alchemy, or an additional Nature or Death or Chaos book, or anything. That's boring.
The second, zero flexibility means the strategy isn't scaleable to the difficulty. You can't pick more, and stronger retorts to play on higher levels. If this beats, for example, Expert in the current version, that's all you can play. You can't add Alchemy or Archmage or your preferred "powerhouse" retort to try Master or Lunatic difficulty (though I doubt the strategy is viable for the latter and probably shouldn't be). You also can't "drop" something and pick a weaker choice to play lower difficulty.

Other realms - Death for wraithform or Nature for regeneration or merging are entirely impossible unless you completely drop Life or Sorcery - what really matters in those needs 5 books.

So that's it for the wizard.
this could probably be fixed by reconsidering the book costs - maybe raising the good stuff to 5 was a bit too harsh.

Now for the actual gameplay.

In the first 30 turns you don't get heroes. Which means you have to enter the time period when the AI starts attacking you without any sort of plan. Sorcery/Life has no good summoning, so that's mostly your race and its units - but you don't get enough Life picks to do "super-buffed normal unit" either - you must pick Just Cause and Healing and Heroism (ok, maybe not heroism, Famous might level up your heroes...but I wouldn't bet on that) so you can only pick one buff and even that means no Heavenly Light - which is absolutely critical, too.
I suppose, Nagas are an option but...idk, feels a waste of mana crystals and sorcery picks.
Overall, you must go "military first" instead of the usual 1-2 settlers. Even if you see a spot with gold ores next to you or something. Of course it also means any race without a strong early military option is out. No halflings (even though they are great with Life) or Orcs or High Men or...I guess the others are fine.
Again, feels a bit overly limited.

Once you survive these turns, you need to...get a hero. Which means, passing turns without spending your gold. While everyone else is busy rush-producing the sawmills in their new outposts, you can't even buy a settler - if a hero shows up, you have to have the 200-600 gold needed to pay for it. This wouldn't be so bad but after already being forced to not build settlers, not being able to buy them for gold either hurts. Let's hope the "military first" strategy finds some gold in treasure.

Of course, once you have your hero, and possibly an item to equip - you had nothing better to do in the first 30 turns anyway - you can take advantage of that and conquer some neutrals or AI using the hero so it's not like it's a bad strategy or unplayable - but considering the sheer number of AI units, I don't thing the hero can keep up with all that and actually hold anything.

If you get past that obstacle too, then there is spell blast from the AI, and having to research create artifact, but once you manage to deal with both somehow, you finally have some really powerful heroes. Except, you need to still find a wraithform item for all your heroes and they are so rare now, you probably won't, so you can forget about fighting anyone with Nature books using heroes as you have no Crack's Call protection.

...so, does anyone else play an Artificier hero strategy? Is it still playable? Is it still FUN?

"OK, RBO-43, here's the script for the new show".

"Oooh, Meklar. So I get to play the all-conquering borg, assimilating the entire galaxy and forcing peace and happiness on my terms?"

"Uh ... no".

"Oh. That's OK. The Meklar make a pretty good antagonist, building a strong power that the hero can only overcome with a final, titanic struggle."

"Still no".

"No?"

"..."

"Hand that over."

<Flip, flip>

"Huh. The comic relief. I guess at least it's short".

-------

<A short while later...>

"Um, RB, could I have a word? Initial viewer responses are in, and I'm afraid we need to do a reshoot."

"Really, I'm kind of busy here..."

"You can try out for that Pirates role later. Right now, we need to redo your part in the game. I I know you were supposed to be comic relief, but that means 'funny' and your part came across more as  'so pathetic the audience feel sorry for you'. And some of your improv - I mean, the way you dithered about actually getting a second colony out..."

"You didn't provide me with any good planets!"

"... the way you hung around 'researching' IT10 at 40-50% for turn after turn after turn ..."

"That happens some times"

"... just turn the damn slider up like the script says next time! Sometimes there's such a thing as being too efficient. We did get a few laughs from that pair of Silicoid fighters rolling all your scout blockades up in sequence though - nice sequence."

"I did like the way I managed to get the timing just right - one turn faster with my fighters and I would have been there first, and spoiled the whole scene! Though I do think the audience might think it was fairer if I got free colony ships at my new frontier worlds like the other players do."

"However, letting the Psilons get into orbit above your homeworld was just seen as too grim."

"Look, that scene really worked! I loved the way I had to put half my pop into space to avoid losing the vote because every other race was in alliance! And that meant the production figures were lies - they said should have had a large cruiser and two missile bases completing that turn and I only got one base; audience should have been totally on the edge of their seats with the twist."

"Meh. No-one liked it. And that Hail Mary attack on the Psilons without even waiting to see if you could actually get orbital superiority? The audience just saw that as utterly unrealistic. No-one would do that in real life. I mean, even the dumb ones weren't surprised that the Psilons had eight larges waiting for you."

"Fine, fine, hand me the revised script. Maybe you'll have granted me one of the first three environmental control techs this time to go with all the barren worlds. No - you couldn't change that? What am I supposed to do? Trade for it with the Darloks ... OK. I can work with that."

------

"Oh, come on. You've got exactly the same thing with another race getting a cascade of colony ships escorted by peanuts and my fighters running around one turn too late. It's just that this time it's the Psilons, not the Silicoids - and with only one fighter. And them getting a world three parsecs from my home world on turn within the first ten turns, it's just ridiculous."

"Hey - you get four worlds this time- and two of them fertile! And you've got really good relations with the Psilons and Silicoids."

"Yeah - but look at the next page: Darloks declare war! How am I supposed to trade for Controlled Barren with them now? So, now I'm the bad guy, glassing their planets. And what's next - they're allied with the Silicoids? And the Silicoids have ships defending the Darlok worlds even although they're not at war with me? I guess that could be seen as funny, but teh humour goes a bit oddly with the whole 'glassing planets' thing.
Ooh - the alliance goes and ... is replaced by one with the Psilons? And they pull exactly the same trick of having their ships over the Darlok worlds? What next, do I tread on a rake repeatedly? Seriously.
Oh, they get annoyed enough with me that they declare war. And send a stack of larges with Death Spores to my worlds. Nice. Tens of millions of dead Meklar. Isn't this supposed to be a comedy? Tell you what - stuff this. I can get better parts than this just by snapping my fingers."

"Look, slow down, you're just going too fast - we can work with this. We'll just tweak it so you're not stupid enough to keep attacking the friendly ships and just wait for the alliances to wear off. Wait - where are you going: walk away from this and you'll never work in this town again!"

<Altercation continues. Roll credits.>

Game Summary:
I was able to get my starting Scout into orbit at Gion and prevent the Psilons from colonizing their second colony.  This despite scrapping my colony ship let me clean up eight worlds extending into the center of the map for a massive positive score.  From there war with the Silicoids propelled me to a domination victory in 2425.

Score Summary:
Scrapped starting colony ship:    +5
Settled:            Yarrow    +1
                       Gion        +1
                       Proxima     +1
                       Rayden     +1
                       Maalor     +1
                       Zoctan    +1
                       Draconis    +1
                       Keeta    +1
Destroyed:        Obaca    -1
Refounded:       Obaca    +1
Destroyed:        Seidon    -1
Refounded:       Seidon    +1
Destroyed:        Morrig    -1
Refounded:       Morrig    +1
Winning vote with veto control:    +5
Winning prior to 2450:        +10
_____________________________
Total:                    +28

Full report attached!

Attached Files

  RBO-43 Ianus' Report.pdf (Size: 873.22 KB / Downloads: 14)

This was actually a frustrating game to play.  I realized very early on that I had made some fundamental strategic mistakes that made it fairly hopeless to play the rest of the game out.  But I did so anyways, eventually ending up genocided by the Silicoids in 2514.  Read the full report in the attached PDF below.

Attached Files

  Meklar Imperium 43 report.pdf (Size: 533.53 KB / Downloads: 13)