[dom4] Themiskyra Advice Wanted

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mlangsdorf
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[dom4] Themiskyra Advice Wanted

Post by mlangsdorf »

So I'm still relatively new to Dominions 4, and for whatever reason I've decided to play MA Themiskyra. And I thought I'd get some advice on several issues:

* Pretender Design, Magic Paths
Themiskyra has lots of sacred troops, so it seems that a Pretender with a 1-3 paths at a high level would be really good. But it also has a lot of (crappy) magical diversity, so a mid-rank rainbow might help for finding gems. Which is better? And if I go for a blesser, which paths are best? Right now, I'm playing a rainbow with a modest A4 and empowering myself later, but it doesn't feel optimal.

* Pretender Design, Scales
I really don't know what I want here. I'm perpetually broke because the sacreds are expensive, so Order + Productivity seems useful. But my magic research is meh, so maybe more Magic? Luck always seems useful, except I get Crystal Seers to resist the effects of bad luck.

* Magical Research Priorities
I'm pushing levels 3-4 of Thaumaturgy, Alteration, and Enchantment in no particular order. Is there some hugely effective spell I should be aiming for?

* Leader selection
So normally I build a couple of combat leaders (1-2 Warrior Princesses, 1-2 Gryphon Priestesses, 1-2 Warrior Sorcerers), a Crystal Seer, and a bunch of Jade Sorcerers (for research) in my capital until I get a second fort complex, and then I shift to a mix of sorcerer types for more effecient research and path variety. I set up 1-2 armies with the Warrior Princesses and Warrior Sorcerers and use the Gryphon Priestesses to ferry in new troops. This works, but maybe I should be doing something else.

* Troop Selection, non-sacreds
I build a bunch of Crystal Amazons and put them in a Skirmish formation behind a line of Jade/Onyx Amazons (or Garnet if I expect to be fighting fiery types). I've pretty much given up on Onyx archers for being too expensive, cap-only, and limited. I don't generally bother recruiting independents, since some kind of amazon is recruitable in most terrains.

* Troop Selection, Pegasus Riders
These are my first sacreds during years 1-3. They're almost affordable (in terms of gold and resources), and they redeploy fast. I set them up either as skirmish archers if I don't have many of them, or as a big block set to strike the rear after I have 30+ of them.

* Troop Selection, Nightmares
After my gold/resources stabilize a bit and I've got a couple of forts up, I shift to recruiting these guys at my frontline forts (Pegasus Riders redeploy faster from the back). I set a block of them to attack closest, and hope that the fear effect will cause the enemy to route before the fatigue kills the nightmares. Should they be attacking the rear instead?

* Troop Selection, Gryphon and Lizard Riders
What the heck are these guys even for? Gryphon riders are more expensive that pegasus riders but don't have a ranged attack, and lizards are... I don't even know.

* Fighting Undead
In my current game, I've got one of the undead empires massing on my borders. How am I supposed to fight these guys? I'm currently building up Onyx Priestesses in the nearest forts and ferrying Sword Maidens down from the capital, but I don't know if this is going to scale against 300+ undead in each of 2-3 armies.

* Summons, Valkyries
This is the only summoning spell I've managed to use consistently. What do I do with these guys? I generally end up throwing them into large pegasus rider blocks, but then they fail a morale check and I have to go pick them up from every adjacent province.

* Summons, Others
Anything else I should be aiming for? I'm generally adverse to using Blood or Death magic, which I understand is a handicap in this game.
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GreatGreyShrike
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Post by GreatGreyShrike »

I have not played them in MP, only single player, so all advice below should be taken with enormous grains of salt. I am at best a low-mid level MP player.

Nonetheless, my assessment of the nation:

Pretender Design:

I'd personally go for either a bless that matters to your troops and makes them better at expanding and killing stuff, or excellent scales + lategame forging utility to get to higher levels of ritual and battle magic (either something that can forge a Staff of Elemental Mastery, or something that can get you into astral rings, or some other booster-forger-ritualist-type-of-thing. You can sitesearch a lot of stuff manually by having people walk around and do it, but you can't cast any high-level ritual stuff easily. Bless varies depending on what sacreds you want to use - the fear cavalry basically requires earth for reinvigoration, nature is good on everyone, water and fire increase offensive capabilities a lot... air is not terribly necessary, especially air shield is not as strong when you can have fliers close with the enemy on turn 1. Low level B bless is good for making sacreds hit harder, but B9 is basically not worth it because your sacreds are too expensive to use as damage sponge-mirrors.

Scales:

As a potentially strong blood power with seers to negate I'd go for order 3 + misfortune 2 + growth 3, at least a little magic, probably not high sloth but not high productivity (maybe high sloth if you have an awake god or something expanding for you).

Magical Research:

Honestly, you can go a lot of ways with the nation. You can get cheap astral - air communions for thunderstrike spam with evocation, or get to construction and blood for sanguine dowsing rods + blood summons. Construction + enchantment gets you to Flaming Arrows potentially (F1 carrying a crystal matrix with a number of communion slaves depending on your ability to also deploy phoenix power). I would probably go for blood power for reasons I explain later, unless maybe fighting huge undead chaff armies in which case flaming arrows or other large-scale damage dealer that doesn't rely on fear and winning in melee is necessary.

Leader selection:
Seems reasonable, but try to ferry troops with build-anywhere commanders whenever possible (sometimes with flying reinforcements you need to build otherwise, but seriously spending fort turns on units to lead around spearmen is a waste of a fort-turn.

Troop Selection, non-sacreds
Seems reasonable for non-sacreds.

Troop Selection, sacreds:
When the gryphon rider dies you get a badass gryphon under your control (unless it dies, too). This makes it basically sort of a flying Jaguar Warrior type of thing with two lives the second of which is arguably better. Try them out. I didn't use much Pegasi - if you want guys with bows there are better / cheaper options, if you want flying melee units the gryphons seemed better to me. Nightmares are better if you can deploy an at least minor E bless to reinvigorate them, and with N4 spell relief (again, communion matrix shenanigans) they are even better than that.

Fighting Undead:
You don't want to fight undead head-on. Flaming arrows butchers MA ermor blobs of chaff, if you can deploy that to armies of archers that would be good. I'd not use onyx priestesses overmuch - if you can, building some temples in safe provinces without forts to recruit H1 indies, then use crystal matrix on onyx to communion to H5, and buff all the H1 to H2 with that holy buffing spell can be effective - as you probably will want communion slaves and stuff happening anyways to deploy e.g. flaming arrows. Regardless, stacks of 300 undead chaff are not impressive or scary if it's not backed by anything good or scary in the way of thugs, casters, and battlemagic, and should lose decisively even to basic precautions and scripted plans of any sort. Whatever they deploy behind the chaff screens that's actually threatening and important, is what you have to worry about.

Summons, Valkyries:
I don't use these much.

Summons, Others:
Morrigans are amazingly strong. Especially with a good bless. Especially especially for the price you pay for them. Get morrigans in large numbers. They are sacred flying glamour fear infantry, every one of them is like someone took the best points of all of your sacred recruitables and merged them together with elves and then made them cost blood slaves instead of anything expensive like gems. Morrigans are the best. They also have great stats. Their literally only weakness is their undeadness, but when you close with the enemy on the first turn of every battle that doesn't begin with a Storm with armies of gryphons and morrigans, it doesn't matter as much that they are vulnerable to anti-undead stuff.

Get into blood magic in a big way. Morrigans are great and justify it almost on their own. However, with all your natural magic diversity, you can get any unique blood summons other people aren't grabbing with an empower on a national mage (so if there's no blood-fire power you get archdevils, if no blood-water power you get ice devils, etc) for later in the game. You can field cheap blood hunters and forge them SDRs, so you should do so.
Last edited by GreatGreyShrike on Wed Jul 01, 2015 12:56 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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