.com.unity Forums - MP Power Beyond Comprehension aka "My power is still raising!" newbie game

OOC: First turn AAR is a go (or should I say, zero turn AAR ahuehuehue).

Dimensionally Displaced Norwegians on a Quest for Lutefisk

So, this’ll be my first AAR, so be gentle. This will be played with the CBM mod, during the Early Age.

Turn Zero: Nation and Pretender Creation

I will be playing the nation of Helheim, Dusk and Death

http://i.imgur.com/CBQ6r.png

For those of you who are new or unfamiliar with Dominions 3, Helheim is a nation rooted in Norse mythology. It is a nation of Vanir, Norse elves, so to speak. It’s where Tolkien got his original inspiration for his Elves. And indeed, these elves are quite elvish. If by Elvish you mean sacrifice virgins on altars, glamour and hide themselves from the eyes of men, and, these Vanir in particular, guard the gates of Helhalla and provide passage through its halls. As an “Elvish” nation, so to speak, you can imagine them being a nation of rather elite troops. Indeed, each of the Van/glamour nations are able to recruit Van commanders (whom shall be be referred to as “ponymen” henceforth) that are able to take on armies by themselves if properly kitted and scripted. They also feature sacred troops that can clear PD just the same with a powerful “bless” from the pretender. But, we’ll talk more about those units later. First, let’s get to the nation and pretender creation.
If you are new to Dom3, I’ll explain this process more thoroughly. In the creation screen, you select multiple features which will dictate the flow of the rest of your game. First, you select your pretender “chassis”. What does you god look like? Will it be a titan who can take on armies solo with gear, or a frail human mage who can cast powerful magicks or forge rare artefacts? Each of these choices have their own point cost, which is deducted from a starting point total. For me, I will choose this chassis:

http://i.imgur.com/itzsC.png

This pretender is a human mage who claims godhood. Her combat stats, to put it frankly, suck. 10 is the human standard for the first four rows of stats. Because of that, she’s not getting into melee soon. However, she has precision 16 (which is big), and MR 18 (also big), which means she’ll be a great battlefield mage we can throw in and reasonably expect to survive random MR-negate spells (spells that need to get through an MR check), and throw out spells quite accurately (precision over 10 is doubled, so for our purposes she has a precision of 22). Because she is a mage, however, she also has very low point costs for new magic paths, which means she can be skilled in a lot of different paths; this is exchanged with her low dominion (1). Now, in terms of cost, she’s slightly more pricey than the normal human mage chassis (40 points compared to something like the Arch Mage which has 0), but that’s because she comes with Ethereal (the ghosty icon), which reduces the chance of “mundane” weapons and spells from hitting her by 75%, and the fact she gets one astral gem a turn. Those of you who are familiar with Dom3 will be confused by my choice of chassis: surely it would be better to pick a chassis with higher paths so you can afford a good bless with scales! I’m going to confound you, I think. Now, onwards to her magic paths:

http://i.imgur.com/KTlSj.png

Those of you familiar with Dom3 will be oogling at the sheer number of magic paths and levels I’ve fitted onto her. Here, I’ve combined a moderate bless (E9, for reinvig and protection, with minor NSW blesses for regen, MR, and Defense skill) with a high number of paths for diversity. All in all, this’ll give me a research value for my pretender of 36, not factoring in other conditions. Now, those of you who are familiar with Dom3 will be gasping at how I pay for her. Magic paths don’t come cheap (well, they do early on, but high levels of magic boosts are successively more expensive), and the ‘heims generally need a lot of gold to function. So, let’s see what awakening option I chose…

http://i.imgur.com/hHRon.png

…WHAT. IS. HE. DOING!?!?

Choosing an option like Dormant and Imprisoned means I don’t get my pretender at the beginning at the game: instead, they will spawn in around a year (or 12 turns) into the game if dormant, or 2-3 years if imprisoned. In exchange, you get a heaping of points to build your pretender with magic paths etc. I however, went with the awake option. Now then, you’re wondering how I paid for the rainbow bless? Well, its elementary my dear Watsons.

http://i.imgur.com/6KgXl.png

By taking **** scales and dominion of course! Every tick of scale towards the positive costs 40 points, while every negative tick (towards the right, or away from the center in the case of temperature) gives you 40 points. Here, I’ve picked absolutely terrible scales, that’ll give me horrendously bad gold income. Also, the drain. It would probably have been better to take some Death scales instead of Turmoil scales to buffer my early income, not to mention being thematic, buuuuut, I plan on blood hunting, and death scales+blood hunting=sadface. More on that later. But anyways, those of you experienced in Dom3 are wondering why the hell I’m playing with an awake rainbow mage, and paying for the bless with terrible scales and dominion. On Helheim (who, as we established previously, is very much gold starved). You’ll just have to keep reading to find out, eh?