Dominions 6: EA Arcoscephale Pre-game
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- Опубліковано 11 лип 2024
- We're been enjoying all kinds of fantastic and magical nations lately. As a bit of a palette cleanser, I wanted to check out one of the the human centered nations in the early era. Arcoscephale is a Greek inspired nation of (mostly) humans, known for their great city states, philosophers, engineering, and well organized armies.
What strengths do they possess that, not only allows them to survive with the titans of the early era, but stay relevant and even thrive all the way to the late era?
Check out this pre-game discussion and join us for a live stream of the nation the following Friday! I look forward to the discussions in the comments below!
Timestamps:
0:00 - Introduction
4:10 - Units
16:52 - Commanders and Mages
36:20 - Recruits Recap
37:08 - National Spells and Summons
46:38 - Heroes
48:20 - Bringing all that together
50:11 - Pretender Discussion
1:01:04 - Closing Thoughts - Ігри
i highly enjoy nation discussions :D
Great to hear! Do you think they add anything to the streams if you are a stream enjoyer?
I'm generally inclined to take Dormant or Imprisoned but that's just my greed not a real analysis-based opinion.
You didn't mention the Prophet which I think you should always cover in these. In this case it looks like the Pegasus Commander is the obvious choice. I do think a Sceptic Prophet would be hilarious though so that's what I vote you do! (this Nation is *clearly* a democracy)
Looks really hard to justify a big Bless investment unless you're doing a Supercomabatant Pretender so I'd pump the scales and the Imprisoned Immobile option looks interesting to me.
...I'm going to have to actually buy this game soon so I can play some of these things myself.
You are right about covering prophet choice. I need to remember to do that, because for some nations it is actually really important. Things like H4s or reanimators ect.
Yoooo Im pretty sure they actually changed blood surge to only affect the unit that gets the kill, ie the mount will only get blood surge if it gets the kill (mentioned in some blitz' ive seen). Its kinda a huge nerf, especially on mounts that arent super killy.
I just ran a practice game with luck and some heroism and I really liked it. Luck isnt a buff you can put on them natively, and it makes it very hard to actually fully kill the unit since they have to get through the luck twice. You still need a critical mass of them, but theyre easy to reinforce because their map move is so good. Just fyi, the first pegasus leader you should prophetize so that you can have a very large expansion party on him that you just reinforce. Any other expansion parties with the pegasus can be made up of two leaders who you script "bless, bless, fly attack rear, bless, bless, attack rear". Its hard to bless all the pegasi conventionally but because theyre combat casters you can queue the spell up and theres a chance theyll cast if after theyve flown to the rest of the pegasi. This got me on average 2 or 3 extra sacreds blessed per fight, and its useful because after you alpha strike you can get the bless in before the rest of the routing troops smack into the line. Any afflictions you get from having luck can be cured by the healers.
I also think it *might* be better to take a dormant god and improve the scales (mine were totally neutral prod and order). In that case you would just expand with the peltast/cascade (however theyre spelled) armies, switch to myrmidons after cap circles cleared, and then switch to pegasi at year 1 to start finishing up your expansion in the peripheries of your territory and prepare for having them raid opponents in war. An early pegasus leader that you prophetize can lead armies and/or start building temples, and its great for risky expansion since itll fly away the moment your army routs. Mid game you could mix pegasi into your army and buff their strength etc and the luck will still be relevant
Hmm...I will have to test the blood surge if I get time this week. We may just do it live!
I decided to try a meme build using a 3x resist fire + fiery explosion bless. Then you send 50 or so pegasi at the rear line and watch the fireworks. While by no means a great build, it works a lot better than might be expected. Since both the rider and mount can explode, it does a pretty good job of wiping out enemy mages unless they have good fire resist. Plus it's REALLY funny to watch.
If you enjoyed that one, do an explosion bless on a nation with summonable flying sacreds. >.>
I think that's a case of the Pegasi just being THAT good.
one of the things I love about Pegasus lords is I put the pegasus as body guards which lets me control with a lot more accuracy when my fliers come in.
That can be really effective. I have had one land and insta-die to a barb chief though!
You got me to buy the game and i have a lot fun playing Caelum the bird people nation so far. Keep up the good work :)
Glad you are enjoying it. I haven't played Caelum in Dom6 yet. Are the mammoths any good?
I had a lot of fun using them to trample small units, but they still die a lot more then i like as they have no armour @@BabelBuilder
Im glad my favorite nation in my favorite age will see some action!
A man of culture right here! Do you have any tips or suggestions for them?
Great video, thank you!
Glad you enjoyed it! Stream for Arco is tomorrow if you can make it!
@@BabelBuilderI'll try! : )
Yeah, another one!
This version of Arco is based specifically on archaic, Bronze Age Greece, which is pretty cool.
Not something you see a lot of in games.
Great video, looking forward to seeing at least part of the stream
I agree with @feelingveryattacked about heroism bless because you are rare nation that has healers and most high XP troops have many afflictions. Heroism is better on nations with recuperation or healing
Arco chariots are really bad but there is a new AoE 1 point buff for mistform that 1/5 mage engineers or the Oriead can cast. And it doesn't lower trample damage like Body ethereal. Maybe not worth it
Oriead is one of the few mages that can out of box cast Poison Cloud at 3N1A which very powerful. In mid game can mix it with Vine Mine/Ogres or Spartae that all have poison res in their chassis
Hope to see you there!
Heroism could also allow >G1E1 for some juicy kobold summons.
Lampads are units that give access to S D2 N when Gift of reasoned, and Ker give D B. Both can be useful if you don't get a good selection of Indies giving diversity.
I've very rarely messed with Gift of Reason. How often would you say you actually use it?
@@BabelBuilder I have done it in every game I wasn't rushed in. They were often keys to winning the end game in mp. (For Arco, most other nations don't have good uses)
I really enjoyed enlarge on my Sacred's because of the health point bonus and it being not required to bless means that it is always on.
Large is a great bless for units that are at certain sized, were you don't end up losing any attack density. So many stats for the price!
3 earth access for dwarven hammers is pretty nice so that opens up your item construction. A lot of items in dom 6 now give +hp so that allows your squishy mages to potentially take a bit more hits in battle without dying.
Not sure how you'd use those chariots but perhaps with some ethereal spells they could do some damage?
Those flying infantry seem to have potential as well, I like the flavour on them too. Fairly well rounded nation.
The +hp on items is something I need to explore more. It is a major buff for some units. I assume that it would apply to regeneration breakpoints as it did in 5.
Ironically, in EA size 5-6 chariots are a bit on the small size for what you often need to fight.
The fliers are pretty good, especially if you can get them relief to solve their fatigue issue.
> People seem to enjoy this discussions
Yea, I'd say, that I like him even more than streams. Streams are cool, but long, don't always have that time.
Hour long in depth explanation? Yea, that always come handy
Glad your enjoying them! I really like all the community feedback that I get prior to the stream. Not only does it feel more like gaming with friends, but I think that it helps highlight things I missed or just don't know and that leads to more interesting streams!
I'm looking forward to the live stream because I can't figure out how to expand with this nation and want to see the expert do it!
No pressure or anything! >.>
Hey, compared to me, your an expert. 😀
Tip for scripting the Wind Riders: the Wind Lord is a priest, so put 5 Wind Riders on Guard Commander. He can bless as many times as you need and then fly attack rear. Plus they are guaranteed to spawn right around him so the bless range is great.
You can also script them on Guard Commander with the non-cap Icarid Champion and have him hold while other priests bless.
Can work. Guard only allows 5 at a time, but with icarid leaders you could make it work.
Thematically this is probably my favorite EA nation so far, but I'm really terrible with them. I suppose it doesn't help that I'm too tempted to choose a Greek-inspired titan pretender. My last attempt was with Hephaistos as a forging-focused god -- the brass bulls are definitely fun.
Those forging titans are just so pricey! I always check to see if a nation has access to any Dom 1 forge bonus pretender chassis.
Pegasi for expansion, then mass infantry and use Oreaids to put buffs on them. Communions help too.
I didn't do great with this but I did use the larger bless from nature and earth (E4N3) since I am a sucker for those magic paths and EA Arco has earth gems. Since they are size 6 already I kinda did it for the memes. Larger does not require awake and it also does not require an actual bless which again helped with the memes. I went dormant for some added scales, picked an immobile and got hard skin for my second bless. Ended up getting rolled over by Neifelheim, but the knights did pretty good.
Larger not needing to actually be blessed is one of its big (no pun) strengths. I need to find time to really look over what can be done without needing to actually be blessed, as I feel those blesses have added value on nations that struggle to get all their sacreds blessed.
I checked and I don't think any other blesses outside of out of combat buffs are active by default like larger. I think stygian flesh or maybe fortitude is really good given the effect on the mount too, I always forget to check if the mount is sacred. Looking forward to the stream, trying to put some time aside to watch it. @@BabelBuilder
Thanks for doing the research footwork!
Thought it'd be worth mentioning but the passive blessings are marked in the dom 6 manual on page 32 with an *. There are more than I thought but nothing really as impactful as larger, like spirit sight or recuperate.@@BabelBuilder
Ah, the nation that got me my first and only MP win. Great nation, it boils down to great expansion and the fact that Mystics and Oreiads are fantastic mages. While you definitely have communions, you don't NEED them, and given how expensive Mystics are I think it would be a mistake to use gigantic communions of them - four to eight should be enough for all but the biggest encounters.
Communions with mismatched paths are doubly difficult if you want to use them and survive!
Healer is very rare and useful. Suddenly your afflicted thugs or mages no longer are. No more mute wizards feebleminded generals.
Blood surge is a very good bless. Yes it requires a kill but it's not that expensive and is not incarnate. It's one of my personal favorites.
I especially like blood surge on things with a lance to get that initial kill!
@@BabelBuilder That is always tasty.
I agree flying horse attrition a problem but immobile death without death gem search may risk being marginalised so whilst you can get lucky (indi's, sites, remote magic) mostly not and Dom 6+ needed for bless to be worth it.
i wanted the death summons so tried the Titan of Death & rebirth with enlarge and reinvigoration as keeping large sacred groups on 2 H3's (2 groups to prevent 2nd lot of rear mages stunning/sleeping etc) helped to allow massing and blessing. Enlarge obviously works even when a non H3 group misses some blessing. Originally used undying instead of reinvigoration until a 25 sacred fatigue wipe. Now experimenting with trying to get non cap Icarid coordination.
I have noticed that I have not found any indie death mages, even though I know a few exist. I am not too worried about not having the gems, as its more for the bless than the death utility, though if I did luck into some death income, a Spector could help boot strap further.
Apart from needing good Dominion and better blessing on a Titan for a nation without H3 there are other cumulative early game reasons on this not to do with later & national summons access - maybe I am ignorant of a counter but it looks to me that avoiding an awake (or at least dormant Titan) pretender seems to be contingent on not getting attacked early by giants or early SC nations as the troop line out is thin on early counters and good as the invuln bless + blood lust is on steeds it is not so good v giants and former delayed if dormant. A ready a dormant Titan coming out with Enchant 3 buffs like the strength of giants added to enlarge bless can be in time especially as earth boots now too late to help get that via mages. Also scales - 3 growth on a death Titan....So I think it depends on local opponents but then as you showed last time you are a good player!
@@BabelBuilder
While it's certainly not a great strategy, I have used sloth-based Arco against the AI in 5. You take a low number of candles, can still use Wind Riders to expand (they are resource intensive, but you only need a few), and you can use skeptics to both keep your own dominion down and to prevent yourself from being domkilled. Then use your early access to elementals, either communions or boosters to empower your mystics, and take an enemy capital before they're ready. Engineers can help your mass of slingers/militia/whatever to bring down the walls, too.
It's very unreliable (finding early gems, not losing wind lords because you can't afford to replace them, etc), but if it works it's a fun way to mess around with magic in the early game. I don't think I would try to use it in multiplayer, though.
Philosopher can be really powerful where you can get away with sloth, ie Therados.
You may very well be the next lucidtactics. Or the next Perun (he did dominions before military industrial PowerPoints)
I didn't know that about Perun, but that makes perfect sense.
His years of analyzing Dominions strategy paid off! ;)
That's like: "oh no a zombie apocalypses! What should we do?!"
Every gamer: "My time has come."
Ya wtf is he gonna go back to dom?! Like it just stopped…. No word nothing…
He probably isn't.
@@CantusTropus :( anyone know why? Or what happened?
Part of me wants to make my own videos, but I'm clueless about video editing 😅
My best advice: download OBS and Davinci and just do it! Everyone sucks at stuff until they don't!
Can you do patala. How to monkey snake?
I actually like the monkey nations, but man they can be tricky! Patala is probably a ways off, but Kailasa or Lanka could be in the near-ish future and some of the lessons from those will still apply to their later incarnations.
Can do te MA chinese favtion(? .- .
Middle Age will probably be a while off, but for MA T'ien Ch'i I can say you will want to lean into communions with Imperial Geomancers, either as support for Celestial Masters, or perhaps Gift from Heaven spammers. I haven't played them in 6 yet, but their sacreds should be useable too.