Dominion NES

[LDiCesare]

If you want to compare stuff, I can give you the password for the email I used for this NES if noone objects (since your mails would be visible to everyone else).
The attached zip contains an Ods file (Open Office Calc) with everyone's stats as of last turn, along with orders.

The main reason I stop the NES is it's become too much work. Mictlan and Arshnoc both had a LOT of magic items. Shinuyama too to a lesser extent. Arshnoc also had a wide variety of troops, which resulted in, well, a lot of sttuff to track down. If I start another NES, I'll definitely make rules much simpler for me to handle.

 

[LDiCesare]

To give an idea of how people performed, Mictlan and to a lesser extent Arshnoc, started out very well because they opened borders with (almost) everybody.
Ulm made it hard for themselves by avoiding magic, but it could have worked. They would probably have killed Ermor if Ermor hadn't been funded by Arshnoc, Vanheim and Marignon, at different times. Marignon did well to bribe Ermor when they did so because Ermor (then ai) would have struck them rather than Ulm on that turn. Unfortunately Marignon then attacked Mictlan where they were strongest, and lost their navy to Mictlan's cunning.
Lanka was generally underestimated. They were rather quiet, but I think it's a bit sad no player picked them. I suppose there aren't enough people who know the Ramayana out there, but Rakshasas can be really fun. It's not obvious, but the wizard who burst a lab in Arshnoc had actually been seduced by Lankan rakshasi.

 

[Immaculate]

can you give us a low down on the espionage people conducted?

 

[Milarqui]

I knew there was something stinky behind the Mantis' death. The Mictlan's priests did it themselves!

 

[Seon]

I for one didn't commit any act of espionage...which was about to change because I was about to send 3 assassins with poison smoke bombs, 3 seductress angels, mindcontrolled madmen rampage, and also bunch of sea troll pirates at Arshnoc. Also I set up bunch of magical explosives at Pangaea border against Arshnoc expecting them to attack there.

I was planning to send around 6 SCs, 6 thugs. 7-8 squads of tough angels/ether warriors, 4 Draconians, 5 Heavy Calvarly, lots of Heavy infantry, some Amazonians equipped with bows of war, items that I was going to give to priests that would raise their penetration value for countering Arshnoc's high MR. Finally I set up a lightning dome over Pythium so that any enemy mages trying to target that province would be struck by a lightning. Also I casted eyes of god to catch any spies, as well as having around 25 gold worth of province defence trained in ambushes, poisioning, and various hit and run.

I was sooooo hoping for you to fall for them

 

[Kyzarc Fotjage]

Why did you keep thinking I'd attack you? I had my hands full with Mictlan, Abysia, and Lanka, and making sure I wasn't backstabbed by you or Jotunheim.
My total espionage: sending 30 gold to Ermor when they were getting crap-kicked by Ulm, sending a bunch of artifacts to Ermor to help in the duel, funding revolutionaries near the beginning in Machaka, and helping more people escape Pangaea.
Alliances: Shinuyama, Ermor, and Vanheim.
Plans: make a few dozen units of thugs and not much else

 

[Seon]

Why did you keep thinking I'd attack you? I had my hands full with Mictlan, Abysia, and Lanka,.

Exactly the reason why I was planning on attacking you.

 

[Milarqui]

All my spying was limited to using the shadows Etimmu created to spy on the Mictlan provinces that bordered me.

As for the duel, I really really thought that Immac had gone over the bend. He could have just destroyed me and then probably free those provinces.

 

[LDiCesare]

I don't have an exact breakdown of espionage conducted.
Aside from those things mentioned by Kyzarc, there were some early operations by Abysia, some assassination attempts but most of them failed. Assassins were probably underpowered. There were some attempts by Mictlan too, with a van seduced by a succubus, and a little by Jotunheim but not much.
Nothing important that I remember.

 

[Immaculate]

i diseased a few provinces, sent a rock that summoned horrors to pythium and on one turn, shut down trade with KF as a result of 'pirate activity' that was really me just confiscating their ships that reached my ports and sending 'attacked and pillaged' ships towards his provinces. this was just to shut down a bit of his (and mictlan's income) in response to him growing too strong without trying to arouse suspicion.

 

[Seon]

Well that rock was a godsend for me because it actually gave me a reason for attacking Vanheim and Arshnoc. I was confused because there indeed was no reason for Vanhein to try to pull that on me, but who cares aboutthat when you have a war to win

 

[LDiCesare]

Yes, there were these things. I only thought of "regular" spying stuff. Marignon's fire rains, Mictlan's annswer with toad rains, later on Lanka indeed sending toads too, more Mictlanese mayhem in Pythium, Vanheim doing I don't remember exactly what which made Ulm believe Pythium wanted to attack them...

 

[Darksaber1]

I dressed Van humans up in ulhmish outfits, gave them Ulmish cloths, food and religius tezts, then sent them to do sabatouge and the likes in Jotunheims southern two provinces.

 

[Immaculate]

Did you have fun Ldi? Or was it more trouble then it was worth? I know the players' opinions but not yours.

 

[LDiCesare]

Yes I had fun but it eventually took too much time for me to handle everything, and probably for the players who had a big empire.

My own debriefing goes like this:

It's astounding how players believe it's that other player who did something when it's actually somebody else (Immac thinking Abysia cast flames at them when it was Marignon, orange thinking it's Seon who frames him when it's Vanheim and when actually Marignon and Arshnoc before that - and Vanheim- helped Ermor)

It's quite hard to balance stuff. Spells, armies, etc. are hard to balance. Dominions isn't very well balanced in the first place, so it doesn't help but still...

Magic research and construction should be simplified in next iterations:
-No such schools as dom, thaum, ench, alt are far too complex.
-Finding out how many rp are available from orders was usually a pain as I needed to find out each mage individually. Better abstract it.
Even that is way complicated. Require spells to be individually researched and 1 story for each spell?

New techs should be made public to all when discovered for MM reasons (forgetting to tell a player he has a new tech is all too easy).
By the way, noone ever researched magic artillery ships (needed evocation 4, which ddidn't seem an important objective to anyone - thaumaturgy was also neglected despite allowing instant teleport of armies).

Either stats should be way simpler in terms of sums or there should be some randomness so that errors when counting don't show up and people don't argue about 1 gold or 2 (lots of double checking needed).

Magic items are too complex to handle. Make artefacts extremely rare/expensive a la FfH, or linked to a unit (can't be passed to others).

Imperial Focus is needed: Give a max length for submitting orders. Like 5 sentences with 1 verb each. Require stories (can be many pages if they like) when more details are needed in orders.

 

[Immaculate]

we haz more dominions nes now?​

 

[LDiCesare]

Mmm. Not too likely. I had ideas about it, or alternate, more magic but not necessarily god-related, NESes but just don't feel like I have the time for it. I've got a lot of work and spend too much time thinking about things I shouldn't think about the rest of the time to have time to actually tend to a NES right now.

 

[Immaculate]

Okay- i'll ask again in six months or so.

 

[Immaculate]

This is what i've been doing with my time instead of NESing.


Rise of the Dragon King: A Dominions 3 AAR

 

[Seon]

Oh, Immac. How you tease us with false hope that DomNES is restarting